


Taken

by infinite_regress



Series: Together [3]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Adventure, Children, Danger, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Hybrid - Freeform, Implied Sexual Content, Kidnapping, Kissing, Love, Maybe - Freeform, Pregnancy, Romance, Sweetness, a dog - Freeform, baths, missy - Freeform, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-18
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-03-21 00:40:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 44,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13729449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infinite_regress/pseuds/infinite_regress
Summary: After finally admiting their feelings for one another, the Doctor and Clara make a  shocking discovery: against all the odds, they are expecting a baby. It's going to be a battle every step of the way.





	1. Taken

They are running, out of the town and into the countryside. The Doctor has Clara’s hand, and he thinks they have got clean away. He considers himself lucky on several counts. First, that they managed to leap out of a bedroom window, over a roof top, via some rubbish bins and away, and second, that he’d just spent the night in that bedroom at her side. The grin on her face is, at least in part, his doing and he feels tremendously satisfied about that.

They slow to a jog, and then to a walk.

She’s still a bit breathless, and laughs. “I think we’ve lost them.”

He lags a few paces behind her. She turns and walks backwards, still grinning. He thinks her smile is effervescent. 

The sunlight catches her hair, painting a gold tinge to the chestnut, and he thinks she is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. 

“So, what will we do when we get back to the TARDIS?”

He thinks she’s definitely turned the flirting up a level, that smile is devastating. He grins owlishly. “Whatever you like, boss.”

“I think I’d like to start with coffee. Coffee and breakfast.” She raises her eyebrows, and he wonders how she can make something as mundane as breakfast sound so sexy.

The road narrows, and soon they are walking along a track running along side a river, with a tall hedge at one side. The river runs faster as they move further towards the hills, burbling over rocks and winding past a patch of hanging willows. 

When it happens, there is no warning at all. Three Utonians leap from behind a kink in the hedge. One kicks him backwards, hard, and the other two grab Clara’s arms. 

One shouts, “Thief!”

Winded, he barely has the breath to say, “Yes, but I haven’t stolen anything of yours,” before a hefty shove sends him reeling backwards towards the river. He whirls his long arms in a desperate attempt to stay upright, but his feet slip and slide at the river's edge.

“Doctor!” Clara screams. A hand clamps over her mouth. That’s the last thing he sees before he hits the cold water. 

He yells her name, but the river is torrent, sweeping him back the way they came. He gasps and splutters, and for a few desperate moments he flounders in the icy water. He’s crashed into rocks and royally shaken before he manages to grab hold of a root sticking out of the bank. Gasping, fingers aching from the cold, he hauls himself up onto the bank and lays panting. He’s on the opposite from where he and Clara were walking, but even if he wasn’t it is no good, for she’s gone. His heart pounds and his ears throb. He curses any Gods that might be listening and rolls onto his back. He closes his eyes for a moment, listening hard, gathering his wits and his breath.

“Clara Oswald,” he mutters, “I’m coming for you. Heaven help anyone who gets in my way.”

 


	2. Dog

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor meets a friend and begins his search for Clara.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, I'm not sure what this story is doing. It might meander to a few odd places. Come along for the ride if it takes your fancy x

On the riverbank, the Doctor holds still for a heartbeat, his eyes shut and head pounding. He’s soaked to the skin, cold, and desperate to find Clara. He’s ready to leap to his feet when, to add insult to injury, something warm, wet, and smelly laps his face.

“Get off,” he grumbles. 

He opens his eyes to see a scruffy dog energetically licking his face. “Ugh. Do you mind?” he complains as he sits up. Evidently the dog doesn't mind at all, and attempts to continue it’s ministrations around the Doctor’s left ear. “I don’t have time for this. I need to find Clara.” Where the hell, he wonders, did they take her? And why? They called him thief, but he hasn’t stolen anything on this planet. Yet. He’s furious and hell bent on getting Clara back, so there's still time. 

As he stands, the dog rises onto its back legs and with an excited yelp, tries to lick his hands. The dog, and he’s fairly sure it’s a dog, with perhaps a little something from the frontier colonies mixed in, has a grey curly coat and is about knee height. It yelps and jumps as he strides along, but the Doctor hasn’t got time to play. He hurries along the bank, searching for a decent place to cross, dog at his heels. 

He’s opposite the point where they snatched Clara, but it’s hopeless to try to cross here as it’s too wide and he’ll certainly be swept straight back downstream if he goes in, so he continues to run along the bank. The dog bounds along by his side, as if it’s a game they’re playing. Only this isn’t a game. Dark thoughts crowd his head. Why did they take her? What are they doing to her? He’s sick to his stomach and hurting from being buffeted in the river, and to top it all, his clothes are wet the wind stings his ears.

Eventually the river narrows and he decides to chance a leap. He backs up as far as he can to get a good run. “Clear off,” he tells the dog. The dog sits by his feet, looking up at him. He, or she, has big brown eyes. “Don’t follow me,” the Doctor warns as he takes a run.  
With long looping strides he lunches himself into the air, feet scrambling, jacket flapping. He hits the ground hard and stumbles, and that’s when he hears a splash behind him. When he pulls himself around he sees the cause. The dog's in the water, paddling like mad, it’s tail somehow still wagging and looking up at him with imploring eyes. 

“I told you not to follow me ,” the Doctor complains. He lays flat on the river bank, reaches down into the water, grabs the dog by the scruff of its neck and hauls him - a glimpse of the dog’s underside makes up his mind the dog is a him, out of the river. “Daft dog,” he chides. The dog, for his part, is glad to be on dry land and shows his appreciation with a vigorous shake.  
The Doctor backs away, but pauses. The dog takes a step forward, makes a small whine, and then comes to sit at the Doctor's feet, his tail thumping back and forth over the grass. 

The Doctor bends down and rubs the dog’s ears. “You can’t stay,” he says. “I’ve got to rescue my friend. No room for passengers. You should go home.” Undeterred, the dog wags his tail and continues to stare. The dog isn’t wearing a collar. Sighing, the Doctor scans the animal for an identification chip. Nothing. “Hmpf.” He shoves the sonic screwdriver back in his pocket. He won’t give the dog a name, but he’s not disappointed when Dog -alright, that’s almost a name, follows as he strides along the river bank, tracking back to the spot where Clara was taken. “So why did they take her?” he asks thoughtfully, “and more importantly, where?”

The spot of the kidnap shows signs of a struggle; muddy footprints and flattened grass. He pushes through the gap in the bush where the assailants must have been lurking and into a lane beyond. It’s hard to say which way they went, as the ground is a mass of footprints leading both ways along the track. The Doctor decides to head towards the caves, as there’s no other explanation he can think of to explain the kidnap, bar the misunderstanding about the Mirkan Crystal. He follows the track at a brisk trot, Dog at his heels. 

He reaches a field where two young men sit by a gate, both smoking pipes that make them look much older than their years. 

“I’m looking for a girl,” he begins.

“You and me both,” one quips, grinning.

“Not just any girl,” the Doctor replies, supposing he should be grateful these two clowns haven’t made a joke about his apparent age and the relative merits of chasing girls. “A particular girl. Short, dark haired, pretty. Three men took her and I shouldn’t think she’s going quietly. If they came this way it would have been about twenty minutes ago.” Assuming they were on foot. If they were in a vehicle, who knows how far they might already be away? With sinking hearts, he starts to realise the enormity of finding Clara when he has so little to go on. 

His hopes are further dashed when the smoking man shrugs. “Haven’t seen nothin. But we only just got here, didn’t we Phil?”

Phil takes a long draw on his pipe. “Corr-ect.” From the drawling tone, the Doctor wonders what exactly is in those pipes. Phil grins down at Dog.  
“Perhaps yer dog can sniff her out.”

The Doctor glances at Dog, who is routing in the hedgerow. “Not my dog,” he says, and strides on towards the town. Dog follows.

He passes The Honest John, where he and Clara woke together a few hours before. It feels like the most bitter irony in the universe that they should find each other, only for her to be snatched from his arms like this. He can still feel her breath on his face, her bare skin and her heart crashing against his chest, her lips sweet on his. The memory is so raw, it physically hurts. 

Dog is still by his side as he pauses outside the pub. “I can’t lose her,” he whispers, perhaps to Dog, or to himself, or to the universe at large. “I just can’t.” 

He’s no stranger to grief. He knows time’s shadow waits to steal people he cares for. He can’t stop it, or avoid the pain, but he’s come to see hiding is worse. He needs the brightness of her smile, the sunshine in her eyes. He strides past the pub, anger bubbling in his chest now, but not just at the men who took her, but at himself. He had the perfect chance to tell Clara how he feels and like a fool he let it slip away. She said ‘I love you' and what did he do? Flung back nonsense like “I’m with you.“ A wholly inadequate response! He had a chance once before, on a beach, lifetimes ago, to say those words and he let the moment fade. Not this time. He'll find the courage to tell Clara he's in love with her. She deserves nothing less. He isn’t even really sure what stopped him from saying those three words back to her this morning. Perhaps he’s afraid of what he’ll become if he loves her. But right now he’s more afraid of what he'll become without her, and that spurs him on. After all, what's the point of being the Doctor if he can't save Clara?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos is kindness and comments are cute.


	3. Time Machine

The Doctor walks into a market place, Dog at his heels. His clothes have almost dried, his hair springing back into unruly curls. He’s already asked people he passes if they’ve seen Clara, and none have. The next person he talks to, a woman selling bread who is packing her stall away, takes more pity on him than most.

“Sorry love. Are you sure they came this way?” 

“That’s just it, I’m really not.” He sighs. “I suppose they could have gone the other way from the start. I was in the river. I only guessed it was this way,” he adds dejectedly.

The woman wipes her hands on her apron. “Shame. S'pose you’d need a time machine to be sure--"

The Doctor virtually leaps in the air. “You’re a genius!” he exclaims. “And I’m an idiot!” He leaves the bemused woman staring at his back as dashes away. “Come on, Dog!” he calls over his shoulder, “We’ve got work to do!”

#

The Doctor holds the TARDIS door open. Dog looks expectantly up at him. “Prepare yourself,” he tells the animal seriously. “You could be in for a shock.”

Dog trots aboard the time ship, and isn’t the least bit flummoxed. He sniffs the central control panel and looks up at the Doctor expectantly. 

“Alright, you go ahead and play it cool,” the Doctor sniffs. He sets coordinates carefully. This will be a tricky business. He can’t afford to cross his own time line, so he materialises a few hundred yards down the lane, and leaves Dog safely inside the TARDIS. He creeps along side the hedgerow and waits. 

In the distance, he sees himself and Clara, walking by the river without a care in the world, almost aglow with residual sexual energy, if that's even a thing. What else explains her radiant smile? The Doctor is grinning like the cat who got the cream, which, he supposes, memories of the morming still hot in his head, he did. 

It’s tempting, so tempting, to shout a warning, but that’s exactly what he must not do. Events must take their course. Ripples, not tidal waves. 

The men grab Clara and shove the other Doctor in the water. He plans to watch and listen, to see which direction they take her, perhaps learn more of their plans. This time he recognises two of the men. They were the Guardians of the Mirkan Crystal. So his suspicions were correct. He still doesn’t know why, though, and that rankles. 

Clara is struggling like the fighter she is, and a burst of pride flutters in his chest. One of the men is soon hopping when she slams her heel down onto his toe. She turns and punches the other man full force in the face, and that’s when things get nasty. The third, who is exceptionally large, raises his hand to strike her. The Doctor’s blood boils. He rushes the man. Time slows.

Clara screams. 

Fury flings the Doctor forward. No thought, no restraint. He crashes into the beast of a man. 

Clara reels backwards, staggering, and for a second their eyes meet. “Doctor!” 

Then someone hits him on the head from behind. As he plunges to the ground and blackness swamps him, he mumbles “I’ll find you,” to Clara, and he thinks, he hopes anyway, he hears her reply. 

“I know you will, Doctor.”

#

When the Doctor wakes, Dog is nibbling his ear. “How did you get out?” he asks, sitting up. He knows of course. The TARDIS let Dog out. His ship is taking care of him the best way she knows how. He ruffles the wiry coat on the top of Dog's head, and can't deny it’s nice to see a friendly face.   
“Not that you’re staying,” he warns, “but come on. Let’s go find Clara.” At least he knows where to look now. The caves where they gazed upon the giant Mirkan Crystal. 

His head is still pounding, and he follows Dog back to the TARDIS on shaky legs. He stumbles through the door in a blur, and fumbles coordinates into the console. Then he collapses into one of the pilot’s chairs and rubs the back of his head. With a small whine, Dog plonks his chin on the Doctors lap. The Doctor lets his lips curl up into a soft smile, and strokes the animal's head. He has no idea about Clara's opinion on dogs, or pets in general, but he has a sneaking suspicion she'll like this one.


	4. Personal Space

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clara and the Doctor reunite. There is more bathing.

The TARDIS materialises in a clearing just shy of the caves. He sneaks through the series of small chambers he remembers from their first visit, and into a vast chamber. The vaulted ceiling is distant, structures like giant crystal stalactites hang above. There is a opening where light floods in and dust motes dance in the evening sun, and the crystals cast rainbows of light through the cave. It’s magical, but he can’t appreciate it. He needs to find Clara. He continues deeper, where the caverns are lit by torch light, and he passes clusters of people. They pause, but don’t give him much more than a second look. It becomes clear to him that these people are in family groups, parents, children run and play. They wear simple clothes, in bland colours, and he doesn't see much evidence of technology. There’s is the smell of open-fire cooking and signs of commerce and trade. This network of joined chambers is a subterranean home. 

Some folk whisper, and shy away from him. He powers past. No one tries to stop him. After 30 minutes walking he reaches another large cavern. 

He hears her voice before he sees her. His hearts lurch.   

“Unwin,” she says, “I’ve told you a hundred times-" She stops and turns abruptly, as if she senses him behind her. Her hair is long, shining chestnut, radiant. Far  _ too _ long. She wears a simple dress, gathered at the waist, with a loose belt, like he’s seen other women wear here, only her dress is pure white. She is angry. He feels it washing off her in waves, energy swirling like a schism, threatening to knock him off his feet. Something else is mixed in that emotional cocktail. Floating at the edge of her fury is fear. She’s been afraid – really afraid - while he was absent.   

His hearts are shot through with ice. How long has he been gone? How much of her life has he missed? She isn’t grey, she hasn’t aged so maybe it’s not as bad as he fears but his whole body is clenched tight. 

She takes a step towards him, and then stops.

Just being this close to her, his skin feels alive, burning with the memory of just a few hours ago, for him anyway. His fingers have their own memory, of silk, and fluttering and pulsing, and he has to shove them behind his back to stop himself reaching for her. It is not for him to break through this wall of raw emotion. He senses this most acutely. It’s hers, and although his hearts are breaking and remorse floods him, he waits. 

“Doctor!” she breathes, bringing her hand to her mouth. “Oh my god, Doctor.” 

His hearts plummet. He’s messed up. She turns her face away from him, and he watches her shoulders rise and fall with her sharp, ragged breaths. She’s trying not to cry, he thinks, and tears redden his own eyes. There’s a chasm between them. Her fingers twitch. For a moment he thinks she’s going to slap him, and he doesn’t blame her one bit. Then she takes another step towards him, and he can’t hold back, not for another second. He takes her in his arms, feels her chest heaving against his, tiny sobs escaping her. He wants to flay himself alive that he’s done this to her. 

Sick with dread he croaks, “How long?”

“I thought they killed you!” There are real tears brimming in her eyes, her body shaking. “I thought you regenerated. Went off and forgot me.”

His throat is tight. “I’m sorry,” he says hoarsely. 

Clara thumps his chest with her open palm. Not hard enough to hurt, but the slap rings firm and hollow. “I thought I was never going to see you again. Every time someone I didn’t know came here I thought it was you. A different you, but coming to get me. But it never was.”

He holds her tight. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he whispers, “I’m an idiot.” 

“Yes you are.”

As he holds her, she calms a little and her body relaxes. Her breath is hot against his neck, and he doesn’t want to break the spell, but in the end he has to know. “How long have you been here?”

“Six months. Six bloody months. Waiting.”

He’s wracked with guilt but also relieved it wasn’t longer. For a dreadful moment he feared she was going to say six  _ years _ . 

The tall man, Unwin she called him, chose this moment to interrupt. “Miss Clara?”

Clara pulls back. “This is my friend. The one I kept threatening you with in the beginning.”

“Oh,” Unwin says. “The raging storm?”

“Oncoming storm, but yep.”

“Should I kill him for you?”

“No! Unwin, why would you say that?”

“Last time you mentioned him...”

Clara glances at the Doctor, a sheepish grin on her face. “Yeah, I said I was going to kill you if you did show up.” To Unwin, she said, “I didn’t mean it literally. Please don’t kill him.”

Unwin shrugs. “Whatever you say, Miss Clara.”

The Doctor shoots her a quizzical look. She bites her lip. “We need to talk.” Grabbing his hand she guides him out of the chamber and through a series of tunnels. Unwin follows a few pages behind. After a few minutes they pass through an archway and into a room with a natural pool of water. There’s a whiff of mineral in the air, and the raised pools is bubbling gently.    

“The baths," she says. “They are rather nice.”

Unwin follows them in. Clara turns to him, with a mock-severe look. “Unwin. We talked about this, remember? I won’t try to escape any more, and in return you respect my personal space.”

“Ah. Yes Miss Clara.” He casts a suspicious glance at the Doctor. “But I’m your bodyguard.”

“You don’t have to guard my body from the Doctor,” she says firmly.

Unwind squints hard, and then nods sagely. “I’ll wait in the spot.” He lumbers off, and the Doctor presumes, takes up residence the other side of the arch. The air here is warm, the minerals in the hot springs gifting the cavern with fragrant steam. 

“Will he stay there?” the Doctor asks, glancing warily in the direction the big man took.

“Yeah, he will. We came to an understanding. It was terrible at first. Him watching my every move, smothering me. Awful.” She sighs. “And from his point of view, having to bring me back every five minutes must have been a drag." Clara helps him out of his coat, and looked closely at him. “You look terrible,” she notes. “Did they hurt you? You took a blow to the head, I saw that much.” 

He  _ feels _ terrible, but not just because his head is still throbbing. “I’m fine,” he insists. She gives him a  _ look _ and clearly thinks he isn’t. She touches his head, and he realises blood is still matted in his hair. 

“How many times did you try to escape?” he asks. 

She pulls a face. “Sixty four. In the end, I decided I might as well wait until this ‘Becoming of the Light’ ceremony is over. That’s what they want me for. After that, they say I’m free to go. According to them, when I looked into the Crystal the Crystal looked into me. We’re connected somehow.” 

“Connected? What is this ceremony?”

“I don’t know, exactly. But they have been kind to me, really, apart from not letting me leave. And we did bust in here without asking them and look at their crystal.” She sighs and shrugs. “These waters are restorative. At least they are to the people here, and they perk me up nicely. Let’s see what they do for you.” Her hand lays flat on his chest. “If nothing else, it will warm you up.” 

He nods. His head is hurting. She unbuttons his shirt, and helps him out of it.

“Clara,” he begins, because as her anger fades his mortification increases. He should have done better than this. He touches her face, and tucks a stray strand of her hair behind her ear. The he rests his hand on her shoulder. The dress is light cotton under his fingertips.

She looks at him with forgiving eyes. “It’s alright. I know what life with you can be. It’s not much worse than three weeks in Glasgow"

“But six months. I wouldn’t blame you for hating me.” 

“I could never hate you. Besides, you forgave me much worse.” 

“I don’t deserve your forgiveness,” he says, and he means it, even as she slips his shirt from his shoulders and lays it by the pool.

“Doctor,” she says, turning back to him. She lets the cotton dress fall to the floor, her eyes never leaving his. “I’m exactly what you deserve." Moments later he watches her climb into the pool, completely nude. She is radiant, smiling, sits in the cloudy water with her hair floating around her. She lifts an arm to him.

She doesn’t have to make that offer twice. He’s sitting next to her in a flash. The water is bubbling, fragrant, with a hint of sparkling violet. There’s a fragrance like lavender and blackberries, spicy and warm. Intoxicating.

She scoops water with her hand onto his hair, and pulls her fingers through, removing the matted blood. “I’ve missed you,” she says. “I thought about you every day.”

“I’m sorry,” he says again. It can’t be enough, but she presses a gently kiss to his lips. It’s alright. It’s done now.”

Sit back and relax, she tells him, rubs his shoulders gently. Her fingers on his skin feel like flame. Already his head feels better, whether it is the waters or her touch he can’t tell. He’s impatient to kiss her again, and catches her lips with his own. 

She giggles and raises an eyebrow. “Oh, it’s like that, is it? 

“It’s  _ definitely _ like that. I don’t think I’ll ever let you out of my sight again.” He pauses, then he adds quickly. “Not in a controlling-stalker-type way, you understand. I mean in a love-of-my-lives, kind of way.” He worries he’s messed that up, too, but she’s smiling.

“I know what you mean.” She considers for a moment, glancing at the cave mouth. Then she swings herself astride his lap and sinks skilfully into a sweet spot. He shuffles forward to let her legs loop behind him. She descends into a kiss, moving slowly. He groans, rising to meet her, the sensation of her around him too glorious to hold silent.

“Miss Clara?” Unwin calls.

Clara bites her bottom lip and holds still. The Doctor freezes too.   

“Its alright, Unwin,” she calls. 

The Doctor growls quietly into her ear, “Don’t stop.” 

She kisses him, hard and silent, closing around him, and she doesn’t stop, not until she’s smothering his cries with kisses, and stifling her own groans of pleasure in his neck. 

Later, they curl together on the mattress where Clara sleeps, in a small alcove. Unwin sits a few meters away.

“Will he sit there all night?” the Doctor whispers. He is spooned against her back, his arms around her waist, his knees in the crook of hers. She still smells of lavender and blackberry. Hair shines, even in the alcove's dim light. 

“Pretty much. He keeps his distance, though. He’s never hurt me. Even when I broke his finger.” The Doctor is glad to hear that, but still distrustful. The Becoming of the Light. What does that mean? If they really have no bad intentions, why would they need to keep her here against her will for this long? 

“This ceremony. When is it to be?”

“Soon,” she says. “A day or two.” She is sleepy, and soon drifts away. The Doctor holds her, and wonders. Why did they need Clara? Would they really free her? He has questions. And in the morning, he is determined to find answers.        


	5. Less Clothing than I'd Like

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor and Clara make a startling discovery about the Becoming of The Light ceremony.

The Doctor wakes next to Clara. If he has a choice, this is where he’ll always wake. At her side, that is, not in a strange dingy alcove with a very serious, very large Utonian male sat cross legged and staring at him. That he can do with out. The Doctor spent a good chunk of last night wondering about the Becoming of the Light ceremony. This morning he’s keen to find answers.

  
He manages to disentangle himself without waking Clara and pads barefoot across the cave, and then sits himself cross legged directly in front of Unwin. “Clara tells me you’ve been kind to her. So I’m prepared to overlook the whole keeping her captive for six months issue. Provided you let us both go.”

  
“’Fraid I can’t do that.”

  
“I see.” The Doctor stares at Unwin. The dispassionate man seems like an oil tanker, big, slow, powerful, and as if it would take a tidal wave to shift him from a course. The Doctor leans forward. “I won’t let you hurt her.”

  
“There will be no pain,” he says.

  
The Doctor squints at Unwin. He’s not sure what to make of that statement. The man sounds sincere, but some thing doesn’t feel right. He won’t quite meet the Doctor‘s eyes.

  
A child wanders into their cavern hideaway, followed by another. “Is she awake yet?” Says a girl with long braids. Two more wander in after her.  
Clara sits up and rubs her eyes. “It’s a bit early.”

  
Regardless, the smallest child sits right down on her mattress, in the spot where the Doctor slept. She nuggles close to Clara, who begins absently stroking the girl’s wavy blonde hair. Its clear this must be a regular thing, and the Doctor can’t help staring at the natural way Clara curls her arm around the tiny girl. He’s not sure why he is taken aback. Clara is a teacher, and was a nanny before that. Why wouldn’t she be good with children?

  
“We want a story,” the little girl says, looking up at Clara.

  
“Of course you do,” Clara murmurs. She notices the Doctor watching her with the child, and gives a self conscious shrug. “They like my stories,” she explains. “It passes the time.”

  
#

  
The Doctor watches and listens while Clara tells stories of space battles and strange, scuttling robots, until he realises Unwin isn’t watching him at all. He tests this by edging closer to the caves mouth. No response. The Doctor slips out of the cave unseen. He heads quickly towards the caves where he and Clara saw the Mirkan Crystal. That cave is still wide open, and really if they are so important and sensitive the Utonians should really post a guard. Or put up a notice at least. It’s almost as if they want some unsuspecting person to wander in. The Doctor pauses at the cave's entrance, slipping his sonic glasses from the top pocket of his jacket and onto his face. The Mirkan Crystal has changed in the six months since he and Clara stood here. Back then it gave off an impressive spectra of light. Clara was amazed when she saw it, and her pretty gasp of wonder sent his hearts fluttering and his blood running hot even then. And that was before they got naked together. He forces his thoughts back to the present problem.

  
The chamber is awash with colour now. Rainbows of light burst from the crystal, shooting around the chamber, some exploding upwards and splitting where they hit stalagtites, others spinning on the floor in a feverish dance of spectacular colours. He waves his hand in front of his face, distorting the colours, as if he were wooshing his hand through water. It tickles his fingertips.

  
Delightful as it is, the Doctor doesn’t feel easy. He tracks a spinning, twisting rainbow of light as it zooms across the cave and out of the chamber, and there’s a problem: although a rainbow looks curved, that’s a visual illusion. Light travels in straight lines, not around corners. He follows the wild rainbow as it zips through the cave, stepping through it at times. When he does it sends a tingle right through him. Its not unpleasant, exactly, but it is indefinable, inexplicable, and his chest tightens as he begins to suspect where this trail of coloured lights leads. Back to the cavern they slept in. Right back to Clara. She’s sitting with a cluster of children around her, the smallest on her lap. She looks up, because she sees him staring at her through the dark glasses.

  
She is the light. Her skin is translucent, bathed in lilac and turquoise and irridecent blue. Time slows, and as she blinks her eyelashes make the colours flicker and stutter, the slight turn of her head distorts the glow surrounding her. It is as if she is made of light. She’s connected to the crystal by a cord of colour, creating a brilliant aura around her.

  
As he scans her up and down, he sees something else that almost takes his breath away. He rips the sonic glasses off his face, because he really isn’t ready to see that.

  
“Doctor? What’s wrong?” Clara gently moves the child aside and stands up. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  
He laughs nervously, his hands shaking. “No ghosts. But Clara, when they said you were connected to the crystal, I think they meant it literally. There’s a spectral trail from the crystal leading right here, to you.”

  
“Oh.” She doesn’t look as if she’s sure what to make of that. His mouth is dry. He fumbles the glasses back on and stares at her again. The giddy light returns and so does the anomalous reading. That’s what he’ll call it, he decides. An anomalous reading. Probably nothing. He sucks in a breath. He can only solve one problem at a time, and this might not even be a problem. They need to separate Clara from the crystal and get safe back to the TARDIS, then he can scan her to his hearts content.

  
“Doctor? Why are you staring at me like that?”

  
She’s giving him a perplexed look, that is so endearing it makes his hearts flutter. _Oh, my Clara_. His knees feel unaccountably weak for a moment, before he gathers his wits. “I’m thinking. This is my thinking face.” He pulls her closer, partly to steady himself, partly so Unwin doesn't hear, and partly because being close to her is like a drug, and he’s desperate to feel that rush. He whispers into her ear, “We need to separate your aura from the light emanating from the Mirkan Crystal.

  
“Okay. We’re not going to just wait for the Becoming of the Light thing, then?” Her breath is hot on his face.

  
He doesn’t want to wait for that unknown, secret ceremony , doesn’t want to risk. Not now that he’s seen what he’s seen. “I don’t think we should,” he whispers. He wants to say more. He wants to reassure her, but as he looks in her eyes it’s her who starts to reassures him.

  
“Don’t worry, you daft old man. It will be fine.” She smiles and steps away, and the Doctor realises what Clara must have noticed: the bodyguard is hovering.

  
The Doctor strides toward Unwin, puts his arm around the giant man’s shoulder, and begins in a friendly manner, “Unwin, I need you to tell me more about this ceremony.”

  
“Tomorrow,” Unwin says, looking at the floor. “It will happen tomorrow, at noon. The Crystal needs her.”

  
He knows how the crystal feels, but to Unwin he says, “What does it need her for?”

The Doctor is extremely disquieted by the way Unwin can’t look him in the eye, and his next words don’t reassure him at all. “Synchronicity. It chose her.”

  
“What will happen?”

  
“Glory. Illumination. The Crystal will sustain and protect us for another hundred years.”

  
“I mean what will happen to _Clara_ ,” the Doctor says a shade darker, piercing Unwin with an icy glare.

  
Unwin looks away again and doesn’t answer. The Doctor's hackles rise, and he grips Unwin by the collar, no matter that the man is twice his width. “Tell me what will happen to Clara,” he snarls.

  
“I can not.” Unwin’s eyes seem genuinely sad, and after a moment, the Doctor lets him go.

  
He looks back again at Clara, who is talking to one of the older girls, but glances up at him. For a moment, her face flashes concern, but then she smiles and continues her conversation.

  
It’s a few minutes later when Clara winds her way back over to him. She sits down next to him, and takes his hand, smiling softly. “I don’t want to worry you,” she says calmly, “But I think we better get out of here.“

  
“Agreed.”

  
“I’ve been asking Tyra questions about Utonian history for days. She’s quite knowledgeable. Anyway, I got her on the topic of the Light ceremony. Let’s just say I didn’t like what I heard.”

  
“What did you hear?” he whispers, leaning close as if he is being causally affectionate. As if it is his way to hold her hand, sit close, and talk quietly into her ear. Perhaps it is, his new way of being. He’s a hugging person now.

  
Her face turns a shade paler. “There’s lot less clothing and a lot more dying in it than I’d like.”

  
“What?” His exclamation draws Unwin nearer. Clara immediately kisses the Doctor, rightly thinking this would make Unwin uncomfortable, for the big man grunts and turns away.

  
Clara presses her forehead to his. “At noon tomorrow, they plan to strip me naked, cover me in scented oil and midnight petals, and merge me with their crystalline entity.” Her lips are thin and straight, indignation leaking from her furrowed brows, which are giving his furious eyebrows a run for their money. “That’s a hard pass from me,” she says firmly.

He draws in a sharp breath. “That is not happening.”

  
“Glad you agree. Now. Plan?”

  
The Doctor surveys the cavern, calculates the distance to the surface tracing back the way he came in, and makes a judgement. “What do you say we make a break for it now?”

  
Clara grins. “Now that’s the sort of plan I can get behind.”


	6. Synchronicity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor rescues Clara from the clutches of the Shaman.

The Doctor nods almost imperceptibly at Clara, and leaves the cavern. He doesn’t turn back to look at her. She’s the best thing about his life right now and he’s not about to let her be devoured by a crystal creature with a fetish for nude women smothered in oil. He’s appalled and furious at the whole idea. He hides in an alcove just outside the arch into the cavern, and waits. The brain scuttles through the information he has. What is the ceremony for? What’s the significance of these frankly  disturbing details? He remembers her sweetness, the feel of her skin against his and the intimate pleasure of their togetherness in the hot baths. He thinks of the consequence of that, the possibility flowering inside her right now, and how easy it would be for that to fade rather than bloom. He can’t find words for it yet, just the faintest wisp of hope fluttering at the edge of his senses that they can make something together.

It’s twenty minutes or more before Clara comes, and he’s in a lather by then, imaging all sorts of exotic horrors for the ceremony tomorrow. He doesn’t know the protocol for merging with a giant crystal, and he doesn’t want to find out any time soon. 

He hears her footsteps before he sees her, padding across the smooth rock floor. As they arranged, she walks right past and doesn’t even glance his way. He waits, poised, eyes fixed on the cavern arch. Unwin steps through, and the Doctor fells him with surgical precision, Venusian Aikido at its finest. Unwin plummets to the floor.

In a second Clara’s by his side and they drag Unwin out of sight. She checks his breathing, then whispers, “Sorry Unwin. I like you, but not enough to get myself sacrificed to a rock monster.” 

The Doctor admires her magnanimity. She looks up and kisses him quickly, a brief touch of lips in the dim alcove. It’s fire lighting him on. He takes her hand and they flee through the winding tunnels. He recognises features, remembers a twist here and a rock formation there, and he thinks they are close to the stretch that will take them to the place they jumped last time, when three large figures block their way. 

He feels Clara tense beside him. “Look, no offence, but this feeding me to the crystal really isn’t on. Just let us go.”

“You do not understand,” says one of the men, who looks like a Shamen, dressed in finer robes than the others. He shuffles forward. 

“Enlighten us.” The Doctor’s playing for time, hoping to glean something useful. 

Clara’s grip on his hand tightens, and he senses her fear.  

“The Crystal will sustain and protect us for another hundred years, once the Bright One joins with Mirkan.”

“How? How does it protect and sustain you? Why do you need Clara for that?”

“She looked into the Crystal and the Crystal looked into her. It chose her. They are entwined. It is the only way we survive. We do not wish to harm her.“

The Doctor pulls her back, puts his body between them and her. “The whole thing sounds pretty harmful to me. Not to mention obscene.”

The Shaman raised his hand. “There will be no obscenity, on this you have our word.” He smiled, reverently, drinking Clara up with his eyes. “The joining is nature at its most beautiful and most raw. Nothing must come between the Bright One and the Light. Her perfection will be cherished and honoured, tomorrow and for eternity.”

“I won’t allow it.” The Doctor speaks calmly, reasonably, but with finality. 

The Shaman doesn’t change his expression. “You can not stop it. You came here, of your own free will. When she chose to gaze into the crystal matrix, she consented to what she must become.”

“Its not  _ consent _ if someone doesn’t know the consequences,” the Doctor snapped.  

Clara moves from behind him, and says, “I  _ don’t _ consent.”

The Shaman just shakes his head. “Your aura is already fused. You can not be unbound.” He raises his arm. There’s a fragment of bright blue light pulsing in his hand. Even without the sonic glasses the Doctor sees colours stream from it to Clara. 

She drops his hand. He scrabbles for her but she’s already slipped out of reach, stepping forward as if hypnotized. Her eyes seem glassy, her skin waxen. He tries to reach for her but his feet are frozen. He is helpless. Her head is thrown back, her long hair spilling down her back, and he is utterly powerless to stop her progress towards the light. Its as if an unseen rope pulls her forward.

Words won’t form. Why can’t he move? Then he sees it. Just as one crystal fragment draws her towards the Shaman, another holds him in place. Synchronicity. The Crystal matrix. Suddenly he sees everything. 

He’s dimly aware of a shadow by his left side. Something flashes towards him. Stars explode in his vision. His knees buckle. He gasps her name, but blackness creeps over him. The Last thing he sees is Clara's chestnut hair, falling loose against her back, and he remembers how soft she is. How she smells. How she tastes. He sees the Shaman smile and stretch out his hand and grip hers. The Doctor is sick to his stomach as she is taken. Then he sees nothing more. 

The Doctor drags himself awake. His head crashes, like storm waves pounding the cliffs of his sanity. He tries to focus and discern his surroundings. He’s in a cell of sorts, a hollow carved out of the cave wall, with bars across the front. There’s something supremely important he must do. What is it? He groans, rubs his head, sits up and plunges his hand in his pocket for his glasses. Nothing.

A whisper from beyond the bars. “You’re him, aren’t you? The man from Miss Clara's stories.”

There are four children sitting outside the cage. The oldest is maybe 14. He thinks it’s the girl, Tyra, Clara spoke to before, but not an adult in sight anywhere.

“Yes, I suppose I am.” There’s a pile of his things on Tyra’s lap. Psychic paper, sonic glasses, a yo yo.

Tyra picks up the leather wallet and opens it. She reads, and then glances up. “Says here, you save people.”

“No it doesn’t,” a boy pipes up. “It says he’s the man who stops monsters."

“I’m both of those things, and more. I need to save my friend.”

“Your _girlfriend_ ,” one of the children giggles. “We saw you kissing.”

“Alright,” he feels a tickle in his chest, “Yes, my girlfriend. Will you help me?”

Tyra puts the sonic glasses on. “We’re supposed to watch and not speak up, because we’re just kids and we don’t understand the complexities of the situation. But you know what? We understand more than they know. We like Miss Clara, and we don’t think it’s right what they’re doing to her. They spend so long protecting their right to do this, that they haven't even bothered to look for another way.  Miss Clara says you’re a genius. If we let you out, will you help us find a way to stabilise the Mirkan Crystal _and_ save Miss Clara?”

The Doctor stared at Tyra. “That’s the most grown up thing I’ve heard in a long time, so yes, I will. I’ve got an idea already, as it happens.”

Tyra’s smile lit up the dark cavern. The other children grinned. Tyra sent the little blond haired girl tottering across the cavern with the Doctor’s glasses. She pokes them through the bars.   

“Thank you,” he says. “Now, I’m going to need a few things.”

#

From the shadows at the rear of the great chamber, where crystals the size of tree trunks scatter light gloriously around the vaulted ceiling, the Doctor is at once mesmerized and horrified. Clara walks steadily towards the mighty Mirkan Crystal, towering above a plinth made of black marble. The plinth is long enough to lay on, with vivid purple petals scattered over. The Shaman holds a small bottle carved of silver in his hand, and the Doctor suspects this is anointing oil. Clara wears a simple gown, long and white, and so thin he sees the curves of her body below, with violet ribbons fastening the shoulder seams together. One tug on those ribbons, he guesses, and the dress will fall to the floor, leaving her naked and vulnerable. She glides unflinchingly towards the hand that intends to disrobe her, still in the crystal’s thrall, and halts by the terrible petal-scattered alter.

The Shaman raises a hand to Clara’s shoulder, reaching for the ribbon.

The Doctor steps forward, blazing white fury beating in his chest that he has to distill into calm words. “Stop. Don’t lay a single finger on her.”

The Shaman’s fingers halt just above the ribbon. He turns to the Doctor with a cold smile. “Seize him!”

Rough men step forward, ready to grab him, but find their way blocked. By children. Their own children, and their neighbour’s children, and the children of their brothers and sisters, all streaming into the cavern and taking their place between them and the Doctor. The littlest child breaks ranks and runs to Clara. Clara looks blearily down at the blond girl, and then jerks her head around as Tyra begins to speak.

“You tell us this is the only way, but we’re calling you out. The Doctor has a plan and if you have a shred of good in your bones, you’ll let him try!”

The Shaman opens his mouth, but before he can speak, the Doctor says, “Now."

The children all hold up mirrors; hand mirrors from their mother’s chambers, large ones borrowed from walls, in fact any surface that shines, are all held aloft in the Utonian children’s hands. The Doctor fires beam after beam of enhanced spectral light from his sonic shades at the mirrors, which bounces across the chamber and converges on the crystal. The light becomes visible when it hits the mirrors, a cascade of colours sweeping the cave. The children chatter with excitement and the adults gasp.

Through his shades, the Doctor sees the crystal matrix begin to change. “Keep going!” he calls to the children, and fires more light. “The matrix is stabilising. You don’t need Clara to merge with the crystal! Its repairing itself!”

The Shaman growls in displeasure, but his lieutenant, a woman with bright eyes and a serious frown, brings forward a small fragment of rock, pulsing in time with the Mirkan Crystal. “It’s working,” she says, her tone incredulous. Then she looks at Tyra. A smile overtakes the frown. Perhaps she is a relative, perhaps she isn’t but they are united. The lieutenant holds the fragment aloft and declares, “Synchronicity!”

Clara reels backwards. The Doctor squeezes past the children, who are running and whooping, and catches Clara about the waist before she stumbles. “I got you,” he whispers, holding her close, bunching the thin fabric in his fingers. He didn't exactly mean to kiss her then, although to say it's an accident is probably stretching it. He needs to feel the life in her, and it drew him to her irresistibly so there was no option but to kiss her. Her lips were sweet and rich and hot, and there's nothing but the brightness of Clara. They are perfectly in tune.

Eventually, she breathes out, long and slow, and presses her forehead to his. “That was clever,” she tells him. "Thank you."

“I know,” he says, a touch smugly. “But I can hardly take all the credit. You spent six months preparing that rescue. One story at a time.”  

She smiles, a little weakly, but there’s still enough light there to illuminate worlds, and she sinks into his embrace. “Can we go home?” she asks, and right now he will deny her nothing. He hooks his arm around her waist and they slip from the chamber unnoticed.

“There’s someone in the TARDIS I want you to meet,” he says as they walk.

She looks up. “Oh? Who?”

“It’s a surprise. A good one,” he says. He hopes Clara will like Dog. He thinks she will, and it excites him a little to think of them caring for this animal together, as if co-owning a Dog might be an important landmark in their relationship. But he’s also thinking of that anomalous reading, and of scanning her properly, and wondering, quietly, if _he_ might be the one in for a surprise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Clara is free of the crystal, but there is plenty more of this story to come!


	7. Unbutton and Bind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clara tells the Doctor how she got by during those lonley months apart:
> 
> “I’d close my eyes and imagine us back here, together, in the TARDIS. You and me. In your bedroom,” she adds, just in case he hasn’t got the drift.

The TARDIS is in sight, although it’s not far, the journey is hampered by the fact Clara is barefoot, and from his point of view, barely clothed. He tries to maintain a modicum of decorum on that front, by keeping his eyes ahead. Her attire is not of her choosing and it feels morally dubious to take advantage of that by looking too closely at her shape beneath the gossamer-thin shift. They pick their way out of the cave complex and towards the TARDIS, but the last few hundred meters of the journey are complicated by sharp stones underfoot. He decides he really should do something about that, so, rather boldly he picks her up.

“Umpf!” Clara exclaims, and then, “Seriously?” She’s in his arms, smiling. She hooks an arm around his shoulder. “I’m not complaining. Those stones are sharp.”

“Can’t have you cutting your feet,” he says. “Don’t get used to it.” There’s something at once faintly ridiculous and captivating about carrying her this way. She’s so close, it’s impossible not to notice how thin that dress is, and it's disorienting. Distracting. Delicious. 

They reach the TARDIS without incident. He places her delicately down on the threshold, opens the door with a quirky smile, making good on his promise that there's something unusual inside. Well, more unusual than usual. She gives him an enquiring look, head on one side, and steps past him. 

Inside, Dog pricks up his ears and takes an exuberant bound towards them. 

“Hello!” There's delight bubbling beneath that hello, as Clara goes down on her knees to greet Dog, who, it seems, is wagging his whole body, not just his tail. “What’s his name? Her name?”

“His. And I’ve been calling him Dog.”

“Oh, we can't have that, can we? Didn't he give you a name?” Clara thinks for a moment, and then decides. “Alfie. He looks like an Alfie. Where’s he from?” 

“He found me by the river, and hasn’t let me alone since. There’s no identification on him.”

Clara is ruffling Dog's ears, which Dog appreciates by way of small yelps and vigorous attempts at licking at her face.

“Are we keeping him?” Clara asks.

This is a good sign, he thinks, her implicit belief that their lives are linked and if Dog is to stay, it’s with us, plural. He rather likes the idea. “If you want to.”

Clara’s smile is a rare thing, something vital and pure, that radiates from her and creates a warm space in his hearts. While she fusses over Alfie, he thinks of scanning her again, and even gets as far as capturing her DNA trace on the TARDIS med scan, and initiating a functional sweep of her genome. As he sets it running, she notices. “What are you doing?”

He shrugs, nonchalantly, because it’s no big deal. That anomalous reading was probably nothing. In the cold light of day it seemed staggeringly unlikely to be anything. “Just checking for a clean bill of health.”

“That’s kinda creepy.”

“Not really. The TARDIS has captured your biometric data, and will run a thorough analysis.”

Clara shrugs. “Alright.” She accepts being scanned rather better than he anticipates. Unaccountably, and somewhat illogically, that confirms for him there’s nothing to worry about. If she's not concerned, then he won't be either. He doesn’t protest when she eases herself, in that diabolically thin dress, right between his body and the TARDIS console. “You know, six months was a long time waiting for you. Do you know how I soothed myself to sleep every night in that cave, with Unwin hovering?” 

She’s smoothing his lapel now, and that sends a shudder of anticipation through him. 

She whispers into his ear. “I’d close my eyes and imagine us back here, together, in the TARDIS. You and me. In your bedroom,” she adds, just in case he hasn’t got the drift. 

He’s got the drift alright. In fact, he’s floating. He has a weak stab at deflection, but his hearts aren’t in it. “Don’t you want to wait for your scan?”

“Nah. I want to see your bedroom. You do have a bedroom, don’t you?”

“Of course I have a bedroom.” He pulls her playfully along, walking backwards, because looking away hardly seems an option when the TARDIS lights turn her white dress translucent and her face is flushed an incomparable shade of red. He doesn’t glance back at the monitor.  
When they reach his room, she is suitably impressed with the domed ceiling open to the stars and the satin blue sheets, and so is he. He hasn’t used this room in ages, and he certainly doesn’t remember the galactic view, but he’s grateful all the same. Clara entrances, and is in turn, entrancing. She glides into the center of the room, arms wide, twirling, the white dress, loose and lovely, flaring as she spins. 

“This is breathtaking," she says, her voice full of delight and wonder. 

He agrees, but not for the reason she thinks. He shrugs off his jacket and kicks off his shoes, and then catches her about the waist and spins with her.

She laughs. “You’re a dancer now?”

“Do I get a vote?”

Her expression is suddenly serious. “In this, yes, of course you get a vote.” Then her eyes seem to expand into the far reaches of time, and she whispers, “Use it wisely.”

He moves one hand from the tuck of feather thin fabric at her waist up to the ribbon fastening the seam at her shoulder. She draws in a sharp breath as he tugs the ribbon, and the dress falls away from her shoulder. She guides him backwards towards the bed, stopping abruptly as her calves bump the side, so he in turn bumps her. The other ribbon is tantalising, and his fingers soon wrap around the silky length. One gentle pull and she'll stand nude before him. 

He hesitates. 

Clara covers his hand with hers, weaves her fingers through the spaces between his fingers, and grasps the ribbon too. “This, I consent to,” she whispers. 

They tug the ribbon together. 

In time, they will bind their wrists with that ribbon, but tonight they bind their bodies and their hearts. Button by button she brings him to match her, and he matches her too, kiss for kiss, touch for touch, among the satin blue sheets, under a sprinkling of stars. 

Later, as they lay tangled together, she asks what he’s thinking. 

It’s time, he decides, to lay himself bare. He doesn’t want to waste this chance, and he doesn’t want to wait for a better moment that never comes. 

She’s already told him. It’s his turn. “I’m thinking I should tell you how I feel about you,” he whispers. 

She looks up at him and smiles. “I already know.” 

He takes a breath. It would be easy to stay silent, or do what he often does, come back with a glib answer, without thinking through how that feels for the receiver. Not this time. This time he is going to do better, be kinder. Be the man she’s shown him he wants to be. 

He takes a deep breath. “All the same. Clara Oswald, I love you.” 

“Well that’s alright, then," she says softly, laying her head on his chest. “We’re both on the same page of this story.”

He pulls her closer, a satisfied glow warming him. “Yes we are. Let’s make it a good one.” 

The story is only just beginning. And it’s going to be a whopper, for in the console room, the med scan pings as it finishes its analysis. Clara’s form is outlined on the screen. There’s a tiny cluster of cells nestled within her, that don’t truly belong fused together, but here they are. As yet, the cells are too tiny for human technology to trace, but no trouble for Time Lord technology to discern and evaluate.

A complicated cluster of cells. 

Brand new life. 

A Hybrid.


	8. What If?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor and Clara discover some shocking news.

The Doctor’s eyes flick open. He is in his own bed, in his own room, beside Clara. He is struck by the power of this ordinary moment; waking with a woman he loves. It’s one of a those small specks of time that lift life from lonely, singular, I, to create something bigger; together, Clara and the Doctor. Us. A smile starts in his hearts and creeps to his lips, and he realises he is slightly giddy with the love they are making. Then he remembers the scan, and that giddiness morphs to something else. Excitement? Anxiety? It’s hard to tell, both emotions create a bubbling in the belly and a glitch in the tune the heart plays. 

The tug to check the scan overcomes his blissful revery,  so he slips silently from their bed, wraps himself in a robe, and pads barefoot to the console room. He has to be honest, with himself at least, the possibility of an  interspecies pregnancy is a giant leap. Time Lord DNA interweaving its three strands with the human double helix? Billion to one. Perhaps that anchorless cluster of cells he glimpsed with his sonic scan back in the caves dissolved into its constituent parts, proteins, fats, carbohydrates, before it even made it halfway along Clara's fallopian tube. For sure, that seems the most likely. He’s almost convinced himself that’s what he’ll find when he checks the scan, and he’s already planning a conversation about contraception. Now he knows it’s a possibility, however slim, they need to both be fully aware and take precautions. He grins at that. He’s assuming more sex in the future, and if last night’s antics are anything to go by, he feels fairly safe in the assumption. He hasn’t felt this way in an eons. He likes it. 

When he arrives in the console room he flicks the swivel-headed monitor around almost casually, because he’s sure what he’ll see: nothing. 

He stares. He blinks. He shakes his head in disbelief. Clara’s body is outlined on the screen. He zooms in on her reproductive system. In the sweeping curve of her left fallopian tube, flashing gently, is a tiny green dot. It’s no more than a cluster of cells, a handful of hours into its journey, and it hasn’t even reached her womb, but it’s unmistakably a fertilised egg.

He falls into one of the pilots chairs. His head spins with this new possibility, but he can’t let himself get carried away. He’s an impossible dreamer, true, but he’s also a realist, and in this he must keep his head. A bundle of cells remains a  _ what if _ until it implants in a uterus wall. It’s not a fetus. It’s not even an embryo yet. It’s correct term, labeled helpfully on the screen, is a blastocyst. 

But it will  _ become _ a baby. 

He lets the idea coalesce. He lets it float free, then he catches on his tongue. “Baby.” The word tastes sweet, he decides, and he chews it over some more. A baby. He hasn’t been a father for longer than he cares to remember, and he never imagined he would be again. He’s never ruled it out, exactly, it’s just never been part of what he thinks his future might hold. The thought fans out in his head, and fuses with memories, images, sensations, small, soft moments. Tiny hands. A smile. Tears and laughter. Daddy. Father, Papa. He feels slightly giddy at the prospect. 

Stop it, you old fool.

He chides himself for getting carried away with  _ what if _ . He should know better than anyone that his restless life won’t make this easy. What if the cells don’t even implant? They could be gone in a day or two, and ordinarily a human woman would be none the wiser. What if Clara hates the idea? She might not  _ want _ a child. She might not want a child with  _ him _ .

What if his enemies, and they are legion, discover this secret and decide this is the way to get to him? The Time Lords are in turns fascinated and horrified by the Hybrid prophecy. What in the seven moons of  Karthage will they make of a hybrid child? 

He puts his head in his hands. Despair casts a cloud over his giddy dreaming. He needs time to puzzle out what to say to Clara; at the moment he hasn't a clue. 

He feels Clara's hand on his shoulder. “Doctor?” He must look like a startled rabbit, as her face immediately creases into concern. “Whatever’s wrong?”

He isn't prepared, and while that's normally his modus operandi, right now he doesn't know what to say. He gets up and turns the monitor to face her. 

“Is that me? The scan from last night?” She stares at the screen. “Wait, is that…” Her words falter and she points a finger at the impossible green dot, flashing valiantly, part way along the schematic representation of her left fallopian tube. “Oh my stars.”

She retreats and sits down on the steps, pulling the robe she’s wearing close around her. Its blue, he notes, the one she wore the day she ran away with him after Christmas. She hugs her knees. 

“I don't know what to say,” he admits.

“Me either.” 

They sit in silence.  Alfie appears from a corner of the console room and whines sympathetically, before resting his chin on the Doctor's lap.He wishes Clara would speak. She told him, once, when he was brand new, that she'd smile first and then he'd know it was safe to smile. He's counting on it now, desperately hoping for a hint on what to say.  

At last she speaks. “I didn't even consider the possibility I could get pregnant with you. That was foolish, obviously.”

“To be honest, I didn't think it was possible either. I'm not even sure this will progress to the next stage.” 

“Oh?”

“It's what, forty eight hours since the hot springs in the caves? For a viable pregnancy to even begin, the zygote needs to implant in your uterus, probably over the next forty eight hours.” 

“So I'm not actually pregnant yet?”

He sighed. “Who knows when the spark of life begins?”

She's drifting to a distant place, her brown eyes fill with unease, her head bows. She whispers, “I can't believe it.” 

His hopes sink. He can’t read her expression. It's inscrutable, a mystery not meant for a man like him to unravel. 

“It might fail. It might not,” he says unhappily. He hates that he's thrust this emotional turmoil at her. She deserves better. “Look, at this stage, we could stop this,” he says, matter of factly. “We could prevent implantation. Let the cells be reabsorbed into your body. Every medical bay worth its salt has interspecies emergency contraception. I’m sure mine does.”

“Is that what you want?” Her voice sounds fragile, smaller than it should be. 

He clamps his jaws together. “Clara, it doesn’t matter what I want--"

“What are the odds?” She whispers, as if she hasn’t heard, her eyes glassy. 

He takes a step towards her. “What do you mean?”

“The odds of this happening. To you and me.”

“A Time Lord-human hybrid?” The word is hollow on his tongue. It doesn't mean  _ that _ he tells himself. A hybrid, not  _ the _ Hybrid. He wants to shake the word out of his head, rattle something so hard the idea implodes, but he doesn’t. He stands and waits for her to respond, because he doesn’t want to babble and bomb this conversation any more than he already has.  

Clara frowns. “Yes. The odds of this ever happening.”

“Small. Vanishingly small. So small I didn’t even consider the possibility.” Tendrils of emotion and sensation he hasn’t known before her, and never will again without her, become real. Grasping past an eternity of waiting and wanting, something stirs so deep inside him he hardly dares name it. 

Family.  He wants this. He  _ needs _ it. 

He’s changed by this knowledge, like a dark corner of the cosmos bursting into light when a new star is born. She shines a light on his dark places and makes him more than he was, and this is why he’s quaking now, because he knows this is a game changer. Everything rests in her hands. She can make him whole or tear him to pieces and scatter him to dust. There’s fire in her eyes now, and he’s not entirely sure it isn’t directed at him. He hangs his head. “I'm sorry, Clara.”

“I’m  _ not _ sorry,” she declares, hugging her knees tightly. “I told you, I’m ready for a life with you, and I meant it. I didn’t sleep with you on a whim. I slept with you because I love you, and I want a life with you, and everything that goes with it. For better or worse.”

He looks up, and the fire in her eyes burns him. It seems exquisitely important he gets this right. If he ever gets anything right in his many lives, let it be this. 

“Are you saying you want this baby?” 

“I’m saying I won’t give our child up. I won’t force you into this, either. So please, tell me what you’re thinking.” 

He catches a glimpse of what she's thinking now, not through a trick of telepathy, but through good old fashioned logic. She thinks  _ he _ doesn't want this. 

“Oh my Clara,” he says, like a prayer. “I want this. A family, with you, of course I do. I thought  _ you  _ didn’t...” his throat catches. 

She’s up and in his arms in a moment, holding him, kissing him, speaking in a breathless rush. “This, this is amazing, and terrifying, yes, but I want this. A baby. Our baby? I mean it’s wild, but wow!” 

He thinks his face might split, he's grinning so hard. 

“But,” she says, and he can see her brain working, her eyes sparking. “You said it might fail. I don’t want it to fail. Doesn’t that medical bay of yours have anything that might help us  _ win _ ?” 

“Let’s find out.” He grabs her hand, and before they know it they are running to the medical bay, hands linked together, hearts pounding in time, with a mission. 

The Doctor performs a barrage of tests, consults the extensive TARDIS medical database, and comes to a conclusion.  He has a chance to protect the fragile life burgeoning in Clara’s body, and he’s ready to take it. 

Sometimes, it's necessary to think big to solve problems, and he's more than capable of that. Expansive, noisy plans are a specialty of his, after all. But to preserve his almost-baby on its perilous journey to the safety of Clara’s womb, he’ll have to think very, very  _ small _ .  

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: the Doctor takes the wildest ride of his life.
> 
> “When I told you I loved having you inside me, this wasn't exactly what I meant.”    
> 
> Ha, am I going there? YES I AM DONT TRY TO STOP ME


	9. Into Clara

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor comes up with a wild plan to save the pregnancy, and enlists the help of an old friend to go where no one has gone before: Quite literally, Into Clara.

They’re in the TARDIS medical bay, and the Doctor has just outlined a plan for stabilising the pregnancy. Even he has to admit it’s a little on the wild side.

 

Clara stares at him like he’s grown another head. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” 

 

Her expression is priceless. Stunned, but still beautiful. Always that.  He’s captured her from every angle. Preserved her in charcoal on pages in his notebook and labeled each expression in his efforts to understand her. He commits this one to memory and determines to draw that too when he gets the chance. 

 

“We've done it before,” he reminds her. 

 

“That was completely different!” she exclaims.

 

“Details!” he scoffs. “We--"

 

Clara stares at him for an indeterminably long time. He basks in her gaze. She makes his heart sing, he realises. Now he’s truly started to see her, he can’t look away. All that time asking her to see him, when he was blind himself. Oh, the irony.

 

“You're  _ not _ going on your own,” she says with finality, folding her arms as she dangles her legs over the side of a diagnostic bed. 

 

“Well,  _ you _ coming this time is hardly an option.”

 

She smiles, and he sees a plan blossoming in her head. He imagines it's the same look he gets when he's plotting something. He can almost see the cogs whirring. Piecing things together. 

 

She arches an eyebrow.

 

He thinks he sees her plan. “ _ Gun girl _ ?” he exclaims.

 

Clara jumps off the bed. “It makes perfect sense. She has access to the machine, she's got relevant experience, and she  _ wanted _ to come with us. As I remember, you called her brave, and nice. You knocked her back because she’s soldier.”  

 

The Doctor looks at his feet, a little ashamed of his, well there’s no other word for it, prejudice. “A lot’s happened since then,” he says uncomfortably.

 

“To  _ us _ . She’s standing right there, on the deck of the Aristotle. Probably still smarting from the rejection. We can go back to the moment just after we left.”  

 

The Doctor can see Clara is not for budging and in any case the idea has some merit. 

 

“Alright, he says,” with an uneasy smile. “Let's go find Journey Blue.”  

 

#

With a heavy heart, Journey Blue watches the fantastical blue box vanish. She lost her brother today, and for a shining moment she thought there could be a new life for her, away from endless war with the Daleks. She’s a soldier, with a soldier’s eye and a soldier’s heart, and she supposes that now that’s all she’ll ever be.

 

The Doctor said no because he doesn’t like soldiers, although Journey thinks he weighs death with the calculating heart of a true general. Other people's deaths, at least. She's back to thinking of her brother again and swipes her sleeve across her eyes. She’s about to head to the mess and get blisteringly drunk, when  _ that _ sound begins again. 

 

It's grinding and haunting and harsh, and comes from the empty spot where just a few moments before, the TARDIS stood. A gust of warm air ripples her hair and clothes and leaves a metallic tang like stardust and dreams on her tongue. A twisting distortion of space coalesces back into the shape of the blue box.

 

The woman, Clara, the teacher who turned out to be so much more, poked her head out of the box’s doors. Her hair is longer, wilder, a little lighter.  Her face is lined around the eyes in a way that speaks of years, not moments passing. Journey is jolted by this until she remembers it's a time capsule. 

 

“Journey. Would you come with us? We need your help.”

 

“But the Doctor said--"

 

The Doctor appears in the doorway. Like Clara, his hair is longer, grey curls bouncing untamed on his head. His eyes are different too. Kinder. She wonders what happened to soften this spiky man.

 

He grins infectiously. “Oh, you don't want to listen to him. He was an idiot.” 

 

They both move back, and Journey Blue steps past them into the time ship once more. It is just as bizarre as she remembers. They lead her along corridors to what seems to be a medical bay.

 

Journey holds herself to attention as they outline the mission, not sitting down or relaxing while they speak. At the end of it, she looks from Clara to the Doctor and back again. “I'm not sure I understand.” 

 

Clara sighs. “The baby is, well, shall we say unique. It needs some very specialised treatment. Fast. We think the best way to do that is to borrow your shrinking machine.”

 

The Doctor chips in, and Journey gets the impression he’s the author of this wild plan. “The moleculon nanoscaler will allow us to deliver targeted gene therapy. If you can get us access to the device, we can be in and out in twenty minutes.”

 

Journey decides the pair of them have lost their minds. She turns to Clara. “Wait. A few hours ago, from my point of view anyway, you said there was someone who made you smile. A boyfriend. What does the baby’s father have to say about all this?” Unless he is hiding somewhere in this improbably large ship, there’s no sign of him, and Journey doesn’t want any unpleasant surprises. 

 

Clara squints and the Doctor coughs. They both look embarrassed. “Oh,” Journey says, the penny dropping. “Don’t mean to be rude, but I didn’t even think you two liked each other very much.”

 

“A lot’s happened since then,” Clara says, with a hint of red to her cheeks that Journey finds quite endearing. 

 

“And there’s the--” she’s going to say age difference, but holds back, as really what business is it of hers if a couple of decades separate them?

 

Clara just shrugs, anticipating Journey’s thoughts. “What’s two thousand years between friends?”

 

“ _ Thousand?”  _ Journey shakes her head. She's done prying. What they do between the sheets is their business. If they’re happy then who the hell is she to judge? Life is short, and shorter still when Dalek fleets stalk every move. The bigger question is what to do next. If she’s going to help them, she needs to decide now before someone on the Aristotle misses her and starts asking awkward questions.   

 

The Doctor’s grey eyes are solemn and sincere. “I wasn’t kind, earlier, and I’m sorry for that. I’ve learned better.”

Journey Blue looks at them both, and feels the heat as they glance at one another, and realises the error in her previous thought, wondering what changed with the Doctor. It's not  _ what _ softened him, but  _ who _ .

 

“You really think we can save this baby?” Journey asks. 

 

“If we can deliver a fast-acting DNA stabilising agent direct to the blastocyst, then I think so. I haven’t had a chance like this in a very long time,” the Doctor says, his eyes filling with hope.

 

Journey thinks in terms of saving ships, cities,  _ civilisations _ from Dalek attack fleets. The idea of saving a small bundle of cells seems laughably small in comparison. For a moment, she almost turns away. It would be easy to go back to her unit, her orders, and her gun. She’s a soldier, after all, and there’s a war on. Sometimes there’s comfort in the place you know. Even if it’s hell.

 

It’s Clara’s eyes that stop her. She and the Doctor look at each other in a way that sends a shudder of envy through Journey. It's not that she particularly fancies either one of them, although she wouldn't push Clara out of bed, it's more that she's envious of  _ anyone _ feeling that intensely. In front of her, she sees two people who’ve created something extraordinary they can’t bear to lose. This time, there’s a face to the pain. Instead of a thousand nameless lives on the line, there’s only one, barely even that.  A tiny spark of life that won't ever get the chance to shine unless she helps. 

 

It’s a day of revelations for Journey. A good Dalek. No one believed that was possible, and yet before her eyes, Rusty changed. And the Doctor, too. If he can change from gruff and thoughtless to this softer, kinder version of himself, then maybe Journey can change her life’s course too. Maybe there is more to life than seek, locate, and destroy.  The endless cycle of skirmish and retreat and remembering the dead and then planning the next mission.

 

“Alright,” Journey says. “I’ll help you. In return for which you get me out of this war.”

 

The Doctor doesn’t hesitate. “Agreed.”

 

Minutes later, Journey takes one look at the jetpacks the Doctor has dug from somewhere on this labyrinthine vessel, and shakes her head. “Won’t work,” she says flatly. “The pioneers of this technology used suits and jet packs to get around inside a living creature. Didn't end well.” Journey shudders. She heard the lab gossip and ghoulish pictures circulating on the Galactic Hub. “If this is going to work, we need to borrow the lab’s experimental ship,  _ Seeker Six _ as well as the nano-scaler.”

 

“You can pilot the  _ Seeker _ ?” the Doctor asks.

 

“Of course, it's a military configuration vessel, with specialised medical delivery systems instead of weaponry.”

 

Clara gimaces. “Glad to hear that. I don't fancy you cooking my insides with laser cannons.” Then she raises a finger. “Um, why is it called Seeker  _ Six _ ?”

 

Journey clicks her tongue. “You probably don't want to know what happened to models one through five--”

 

Clara starts to say, “Doctor--”

 

“Clara, trust me, it will be fine. If we get into trouble, use the emergency transmat to pull us out.”

 

Clara sighs, as if this is the sort of conversation she has on a regular basis. She mutters, “On a scale of one to jumping into an active volcano, this has to be right up there with taking a lava bath.”

 

“I'm not going to deny it's dangerous. So we have to decide, is it worth the risk?” 

 

Clara closes her eyes for a moment. “There’s really no other way? You can’t just inject me or something?”

 

“Sorry, but if I use the stabiliser directly on you, it will set off a chain reaction, altering your DNA too. This way we can deliver it straight to the pre-embryonic cells. Less risky for you and the baby.”

 

Privately, Journey thinks it's rash to start thinking about a glimmer of cells a few hours old as a  _ baby _ when a billion things can still go wrong, but she doesn’t say anything to dampen their spirits. 

 

Clara pulls a tight-lipped face. “Alright. Both of you. Please be careful.”

 

Journey watches as the Doctor touches Clara‘s hand, fleetingly, but a world of meaning passes between them in that moment. Clara offers Journey a smile, too, and squeezes her hand gratefully.  

 

Journey sighs. This is shaping up to be the weirdest threesome ever.  

 

#

 

Clara sits alone in the TARDIS medical bay, a tiny vial and transmat delivery system in her hand. This is the most bizarre, crazy thing she’s ever done, and her life that’s saying something. The TARDIS has helpfully rearranged the interior dimensions of the medical bay so there is a much bigger space than usual around her. If she needs to, she can use the micro-transmat device currently in her hand to re-actualise _ Seeker Six _ and pull Journey and the Doctor out. 

 

She tests the comms they’ve set up. “Doctor, can you hear me?”

 

“Loud and clear.” His voice is hardly reassuring, because it’s obvious he’s enjoying this way too much. 

 

Years ago, when they went into the Dalek, Clara had no idea what it looked like from the outside to be shrunk down. As she peers into the vial she detects, well, nothing.  _ Seeker Six _ is so small she can’t see it, and she supposes that’s a good thing where they’re going. She takes a deep breath. At least the method of delivering the  _ Seeker _ to its destination lets her retain her dignity. For a wretched moment she thought the ship might have to go in the way the baby would eventually come out. She was immensely relieved when the Doctor explained they could use a micro-transmat device to effectively beam  _ Seeker Six _ inside her. 

 

“Are you ready?” Clara adjusts the data screen by her side. The Seeker is equipped with an on-board camera, which at the moment is providing a disturbing close up of the skin on her thumb. Great ridges like canyons, which she supposes are the whorl of her fingerprints, fill the screen. 

 

“Clara,” the Doctor’s voice continues, “it's important you stay calm and still. We don't want your system flooded with adrenaline. Ordinarily they'd administer a sedative, but you need to stay alert.”

 

“I'm calm,” Clara said tightly, taking a deep breath. “Calm is my middle name. Calm Clara.” She's aware she's babbling, and is in fact a long way from calm. She forces a few more deep breaths. It will be fine. Quick dash inside, deliver the stabiliser, and she'll zap them out with the transmat device. What could possibly go wrong?

 

#

 

The Doctor snatches a glance at Journey Blue sitting at the helm of  _ Seeker Six. _ She's a competent pilot, that much is clear from her skilled runthrough of the  _ Seeker’s _ systems. Although he's engrossed in figuring out the scanning and medical equipment, he steals occasional glances her way, feeling genuinely sorry for the short shrift he gave her after the Dalek. Things seemed simpler then, letting his spikey dislike for all things military outstrip his sense. A sliver of shame shuddered down his spine for the scorn he’d poured on both her and Danny. 

 

“So. Ready to get inside your girlfriend?” Journey asks with a grin. 

 

He coughs. It's not easy to embarrass the Last of the Time Lords, but Journey seems determined to try, and he probably deserves it. He opens a channel to Clara. “Ready to transport,” he says quickly. 

 

The view in front of them changes, from the layers of epithelial cells on Clara's fingers, briefly to white, and then blackness. Journey activates the craft’s search lamps. They are inside the cavern of Clara’s womb. It is at once awesome and bizarre, and the Doctor has no words to describe the odd feeling.

 

“We need to prime the protein shields.”  The Seeker can assimilate cells from the host, tricking the body’s immune system into thinking the ship belongs here. But like all biological processes, it takes time. The Doctor instructs the  _ Seeker _ to take a sample of cells and starts charging the system.

 

“Well this is …kinda creepy,” Journey notes as she pilots the craft vertically along a pulsing wall of flesh. “Where do we go?”

 

“We’re looking for...There!” The Doctor directs the Seeker’s lights toward the opening of a tunnel-like structure. “That’s the left fallopian tube. Go up!”  

Journey guides the small ship into the tunnel. The walls are undulated like the living flesh they are, and slightly curved. They can’t see very far ahead at all. 

“So, how far along is this… embryo?” Journey asks.

 

“It’s about thirty six hours since…” The memory of the moment makes him flush. He wonders if he’ll remember each time they make love as clearly as he remembers that steamy night in the hot baths. He can almost feel her embrace. It’s surreal to recall the memory of being inside her while  _ actually _ being inside her. He jerks his attention away from the memory and back to the present. “Anyway. What we’re searching for can’t even be accurately described as an embryo yet. The fertilised ovum has probably only divided into six or eight individual cells at this stage. The DNA will be trying to stabilise with each cell division. We need to…” He stops talking, as up ahead the  _ Seeker’s _ lamps light up a spherical body travelling slowly towards them along the tube. 

 

“Is that it?” Journey asks, sounding less than impressed. He must admit, it doesn’t look like much, but inside that irregular ball is the potential for a whole new life. Something made from him and from Clara, the building blocks of a hybrid. A child. Their child. Quickly, he scans the cells. As he feared, the process of meiosis is compromised. Time Lord and human DNA are working hard to combine, but the number of chromosomes is all wrong, and that extra strand of DNA in the Time Lord genetic library is wreaking havoc. The strands of DNA unravel on the screen and try again to reconnect. 

 

Journey glances at his readings. “I’m no expert, but that doesn’t look good.”

 

“It isn’t,” he says grimly. He shouldn't think of the cells as anything more than a jumble of DNA, but the truth is he already feels connected. He wants this potential life to live and breathe. He wants to track the rise and swell of Clara’s belly, lay his hand on her tummy and feel his baby kick. A perfect image flashes in his mind. Clara is standing in front of him in the TARDIS console room, her back pressed to his front, and he wraps his arms around her and links his fingers over her belly. He kisses her cheek. She smiles. He doesn’t know if this is a glimmer of the future, or just an impossible dream, but he knows he wants that moment.  

 

“What’s going on?” This is Clara’s voice, tight with impatience that he recognises as concern.

 

“We’ve just found the pre-embryonic cells,” he tells her as he charges the serum delivery system. He needs to fire the DNA stablising agent at the center of the blastocyst, and then retreat so they don’t damage the delicate cells. “Journey, can you get us closer? Take care not to touch the cell wall. We don’t want to cause any damage.” If the pre-embryonic cells are damaged then Clara’s immune system will send an army of specialist white blood cells, called macrophages, to eliminate foreign bodies. That won’t end well for the  _ Seeker _ or the cells.

 

Journey brings them close and matches their slow course along the tube leading to Clara’s womb. The Doctor readies the stabilising serum.

 

“Just a little closer…” he requests.

 

Without warning, they lurch to the left. The blastocyst of cells rushes upwards towards them.

 

“Doctor!” Clara screams through the  _ Seeker’s _ speakers. 

 

His hearts lurch. Whatever’s happening aboard the TARDIS, he’s powerless to help.

 

#

 

Clara picks herself up from the floor of the medical bay. “What the hell was that?” 

She hits the comms panel. “Doctor, can you hear me?” The TARDIS lurches again. Panic swells in her chest. Dry mouthed with fear, she shouts again into the comms system. Nothing but static. 

 

She flicks the monitor to an external view. They are still in Aristotle’s medical facility, but the ship is under attack. The deck lurches. In the corridor beyond the medical bay, smoke rises in the grey curls. Silently, three Daleks enter. Soldiers fall back, scrambling to escape the deadly barrage of unheard fire. One by one the fighters are frozen, skeletons exposed in a flash of blue light before they turn to dust. The Daleks turn, stop, aim their guns towards the TARDIS. Clara leaps to her feet. Can the TARDIS withstand Dalek guns? She thinks so, with her logical mind, but her heart is pounding, and it’s her heart that’s making decisions. She dashes to the console room. She doesn’t know exactly what to do, but has enough sense to scroll down the list of recently used coordinates and select familiar numbers -- her flat -- and then pull the dematerialisation lever. 

 

Aristotle’s deck fades away. 

 

“Doctor?” she tries again. The Dalek’s were interfering with their comms, but as they leave the Daleks behind, the communications channel opens again. 

 

“Clara? Are you alright? What’s going on?”

 

Clara spits the word as if it were a curse. “Daleks!”

 

#

 

As Clara moves, the Doctor and Journey are shaken inside  _ Seeker Six _ . The Doctor hears the word  _ Daleks _ as he tries to aim the Seeker’s injector system at the bundle of cells.

 

Suddenly, Journey yells. Four misshapen white orbs bear down on the ship. “What the hell are they?” 

 

“Macrophages. Clara’s immune system thinks the blastocyst is a foreign invader. It's trying to get rid of it.” More macrophages appear, in front and behind, until the view screen is a mass of white. They have to act now. Unless the DNA is manipulated into a configuration Clara’s body accepts as her own, time’s up for their chances of parenthood.

 

Journey brings the Seeker around. The Doctor aims the serum delivery system at the cells, but the macrophages turn on the ship. More and more macrophages smother the Seeker, and the ship starts to sink. With a bump, it lands on the base of the tube, and then bounces. 

 

“The propulsion system’s getting choked!” Journey exclaims.

 

“Activate the protein shield.” 

 

“I have!” Journey snaps.

 

The Doctor pulls up more readings. This seems like an unusually aggressive response from Clara’s system immune, stoked by adrenaline and who knows what else. He doesn’t quite understand it.

 

“Too slow!” Journey yells. “We’ll be smothered. The shields can’t maintain a functional level.” Journey boosts the defense grid, but the Doctor knows what she’s saying is true. The only chance is to deliver the stabilising agent to the embryo and beam out.  

 

The Doctor fires. He watches his screen, tracking the stabilising serum as it works on the DNA in the cells of his almost-child. For a chilling moment the strands of DNA on the screen part and twist, and he thinks the process has failed and the cells will disintegrate. Then the strands start to recombine. 

 

#

 

Clara has returned to sickbay, and is holding the transmat over her belly with shaking hands. “Doctor? Journey?” she croaks into the comms system, her mouth like sand. 

 

She hears the Doctor’s voice as if in a distant dream. “Bring us home,” he says.

 

Heart racing, she hits the switch. With a rushing and grinding, the Seeker appears next to her, full size. The small ship is covered in white slime, and she doesn’t even want to speculate on what that might be. The ramp lowers. She rushes inside, wanting to know only one thing. “Did it work?”

 

The Doctor stares at a screen. Two strands of the DNA’s double helix, looking to her inexpert eyes exactly as it should, are on the screen. She looks at him with pleading eyes. 

 

The Doctor puts his arm around her shoulder, drawing her close. His voice is a trembling whisper. “The DNA has hybrised successfully. It worked.” 

  
  



	10. Me Too

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A moment of calm for Clara and the Doctor. Plus flirting and kissing.

There is no one Journey Blue wants to say goodbye to, nor does she know where she wants to go, so they take off into the time vortex, leaving the miniaturization equipment and Seeker Six behind on the Aristotle’s deck. 

The Doctor says he thinks Journey looks tired. 

She shrugs at that, perhaps a little unwilling to admit fatigue. “I could probably do with a shower and some sleep. I guess you two have things to talk about?” She raises an eyebrow at Clara. 

“Yes. Of course,” the Doctor says, slightly awkwardly. He does want to talk to Clara, very badly in fact. 

Clara takes pity at his discomfort. “I’ll help you find a room,” she tells Journey, and they leave the medical bay together.

It isn't long before Clara returns, and he is still staring wistfully at the image of hybrid DNA on the scanner when she does. She pads quietly next to him, and leans against the medical bed beside him. He can feel her looking at him, even though he doesn't turn his head. He knows her face intimately, every soft curve, the way her hair falls, her eyes, so full of kindness and courage. He thinks she is a better part of him, now more than ever.

“Doctor,” she whispers, “What have we done?” He doesn’t hear regret in her tone, he understands implicitly that she is not sorry for what has happened. Her voice holds a kind of awe, and a genuine curiosity.

He slips an arm around her shoulder. “The impossible. Or at least the highly improbable.” 

Clara laughs. “That sounds about right. But is it safe, now? The baby, I mean.”

“As safe as any other pregnancy at this stage. In about forty eight hours we’ll know if the blastocyst implants in your uterus successfully.” It sounds rather clinical when he puts it like that, so he tries to lighten the mood. “I recommend the complete absence of Daleks, Zygons, and other hostile nasties. Perhaps some gentle exercise followed by a movie. Possibly even ice cream.”

Clara looks at him skeptically. “Alright. Who are you, and what have you done with the Doctor?”

He grins and scoops his other arm around her, too. “That idiot who keeps putting you in danger? He's on hiatus.” 

Her smile seems radiant. “Okay, we’ll see how long that lasts. I'm not going to say no to a movie and ice cream. I highly doubt you can sit still long enough, though.”

“I can sit still!” he says, mock offended. “I once watched the entire life cycle of a galaxy cluster from quantum dust fragments gathering, into protostars and stellar nurseries, and then to heat-death at the end of its life.”

“Yeah? How long?” 

“Well I might have compressed the time frame slightly into a few hundred… “

She raised one of those sweeping eyebrows, and smiled, adorably. “Hours? Minutes?”

“Seconds,” he admits, swooping in closer, aiming to distract her with a kiss. “You know, you shouldn't do that, makes it very hard for me to concentrate.”

“Do what?” she teases, wiggling herself away, almost skipping to the other side of the medical bed. “I'm sure I don't know what you are talking about.” 

He makes a low rumbling sound in his throat and pursues her playfully around the bed. “That. There. With your face.”

She purses her lips in a coy smile. “Really, Doctor, your planet-sized intellect dazzled by a smile? I hardly believe you are so easily distracted.”

“Oh, please, distract away.” He gets his hands on her waist, pulling her closer. 

She doesn't resist. “Why Doctor, I do believe you are flirting.”

“Me? Flirting? Never. I'm against flirting. I'm probably on record somewhere as against flirting.” He took the opportunity to kiss her neck, delighting in the apple fragrance of her shampoo, and the intoxicating brush and flicker of her hair against his nose. 

She gasped, slightly. “You are the biggest flirt I've ever met!” 

“Flirting, hugging, bantering. I'm sure that's not me. Perhaps you're mixing me up with someone else?” 

“Perhaps you've changed,” she says, pulling herself up on her tiptoes to find his lips, as she whispers, “Perhaps I like this version of you.” 

His hearts race and skip against her chest, but he feels suddenly vulnerable. “I hope so,” he says quietly. “Because I think maybe you’re stuck with him.” 

Her smile is effervescent, and he's sure he rocks on his feet, as she whispers against his lips, “I hope so, too.” 

“Clara,” he murmurs. She kisses him with feeling, now. Small kisses on the corner of his lips, and then a deep kiss that makes him groan into her, pull her close as if she's something he needs to sustain life in this chaotic universe. There's a glory of tongues and fingers and the warmth of skin and secrets, and he thinks she's all he ever needs. If they can snatch a life together, it won't matter in what order time runs outside the world they create together. He’ll capture time, define it by the swell of her belly, and by their baby’s first smile, those first baby steps, by nursery rhymes and soft toy penguins, a mobile made of star stuff hanging over a cot. And then later, by tying shoelaces and learning to ride a bike, and algebra and temporal mechanics and finally by his own tears. He won't miss a single moment. Not this time. 

“Stay. Stay with me,” he knows his voice has taken on a pleading edge. He hates it and at the same time he doesn't care. He's not above pleading or begging for her. 

“You daft old man,” she says breathlessly. “I'm not going anywhere.” 

He can feel the truth of it in his bones, in the heat of her eyes and the rough satin of her voice. He's breathless now, although he shouldn't be, but she knocks the uncertainty out of him. He kisses her again. He doesn’t remember other kisses quite like this, not ever. Not so fierce, so consuming, so total. Every kiss before Clara quakes in the shadow of this kiss, those pale imitations of passion that squeezed past his defences over the years. He gives himself over to Clara completely, and loses himself within her. It's funny, how sometimes, in order to find yourself, you have to let yourself go. 

“I think,” she says later, as the are wrapped around each other still, but feeling lazy in the afterglow of passion. “That I could stay here forever.”

“In the time vortex?” 

“In your arms.” 

“That's alright, then,” he said. “Me too.” 

"Although, you promised me a movie. And ice cream."

The Doctor grinned, a wolfish smile on his lips. "Then a movie and ice cream you shall have, Clara Oswald. Are you ready for the cinematic experience of a life time?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I guess the Doctor and Clara are going to the movies... 
> 
> You up for that?


	11. The Cinematic Experience of a Lifetime

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor and Clara visit the cinema and get closer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long delay! Life gets awful busy.

Clara knocks on Journey’s door. The soldier looks battle weary and bleary-eyed as she peers out.

“We’re going to see a movie,” Clara says. 

Journey scratches her head, looking befuddled, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “Doing what, now?”

“Film. Cinema. Icecream. Possibly popcorn. No Daleks. Definitely no slightly icky exploration of anyone’s internal organs.” 

“Seriously? You two do regular stuff like that?” Journey yawns as she speaks, and Clara is suddenly sorry she woke her up, wondering if this is the first safe sleep Journey has had in a very long time. And Journey has a point. It’s not like she and the Doctor make a habit out of mundane stuff. Hardly ever. 

“We do now,” Clara says firmly. “Want to come with?” 

“I don’t know. Is it kinda… ” Journey glances at Clara’s belly and screws up her face. “...like a date?”

“Not exactly. Not exclusively. I mean, we’re taking a day off blowing things up and getting covered in gloop. Come on, it will be fun. Least we can do is treat you to a night out after you helped us with… the situation. Unless you really need to go back to sleep.” 

“Nah. I’ve slept enough. Time for some living. Journey smiles, and Clara knows she’s won her over. 

They arrive at Mexatropolis parking dock just as a sleek intergalactic carrier arrives and a hoard of energetic, chattering teens pour from the vessel. Clara, the Doctor and Jouney join the crowd heading towards a huge concourse, where Mexatropolis employees in blue spangled shirts hand out small discs. Clara watches as people pop them in their ears.

“Universal translation devices,” the Doctor offers. “The AI links with each person's auditory network. Translates into a hundred billion languages. We won't need one. The TARDIS already does that for us.”

Startled, Journey looks up. “Does what?” 

“Translates. What, you thought that a woman from twenty first century Earth and a fighter from the Combined Galactic Resistance two thousand years in her future just happened to talk the same language?”

“Well… “ Journey scowled at the Doctor. “I didn't give it much thought.”  

A holographic image of an androgynous head appeared on a dias in the center of the concourse, declaring, “Welcome to the second biggest cinema multiplex in the universe!” The head smiled manicially. “Every movie ever made on any planet in the universe, available in 2D, 3D, 4D. We offer a bespoke theatrical experience, in multiple languages. Showings available with subtitles for the hard of hearing, audio description for our visually impaired customers, and pleasant accommodations for beings of all sizes and mobility needs.”

“Why’d he bring us to the second biggest?” Journey whispers to Clara as they head towards one of the box offices.

“Um. I think there’s a biometrically enforced ban on him at the  _ actual _ biggest. Something about blowing up a theatre…”

“There were Axons in the projector room,” the Doctor says indignantly. “Someone had to sort them out.” He snorts. “Ungrateful bunch.”

They arrive at an automated booth with a list of films scrolling down a screen “So, what do you want to see?”

Clara stares past the Doctor’s shoulder. She blinks, because what she’s looking at isn’t a sight she ever expected to see. 

The Doctor sees she is staring and turns to follow her gaze. “That can not be good.”

“Perhaps we shouldn't jump to conclusions…” Clara offers, unconvinced. “Maybe it's not what it looks like. Even she wouldn't...surely not…”

The Doctor quirks an eyebrow. “She would. You know she would. Without a moment's hesitation.” 

Clara squints. “Are we going to--"

“--stop her?” the Doctor raises an eyebrow. 

“We’re stopping her,” Clara says firmly. 

Journey coughs. “It's cute, and all, you finishing each other's sentences. But do you want to fill me in?”

Clara turns towards Journey, as the Doctor takes long strides across the concourse, towards a cafe where two women are sitting side by side at a table. One is rocking a stroller back and forth, soothing a child no more than a few months old. 

“That woman there,” she points at the familiar frock-coated psychopath the Doctor is striding towards, “Is probably the most dangerous woman in the universe.”

“What her? With that stroller and the cute kid?” 

“I’m afraid so.” Clara watches Missy smile like a cheetah at the woman. The woman slowly slumps forward on the table, and Missy seamlessly takes the stroller and saunters away.

Clara and Journey run to catch the Doctor up. He’s blocking Missy’s path.

“Oi, out of the way. Oh, it’s you.” Missy looks up. “Well this is embarrassing. You’ve caught me doing a good deed. Looking after this wee babbie here.”

“Missy, what are you doing?” The Doctor sounds tired more than angry. 

“Just returning this little charmer to his rightful guardian.”

“And who might that be?”

“The Crown Prince Venlofax, Prime Regent of the Tyronian Cluster.”

Clara whips out her phone while the Doctor squats in front of the child.

“He doesn’t look very royal to me,” the Doctor says. “And what’s it got to do with you?”

“Oh, this and that,” Missy says. “I really must get along. Don’t want to keep daddy waiting.” She tries to maneuver around the Doctor, but he blocks her path. 

Clara’s already found the Prince on the galactic Hub’s WikiWho’s Evil page. “Says here the Crown Prince is a ruthless dictator who has a tendency to dally with earth women and other unsuspecting females. He’s notoriously cruel.”

“Details,” Missy sniffs. 

“Why are you doing this?” The Doctor takes hold of the handlebars, stopping Missy in her tracks.

“Oh, you know. I can’t bear to see a child separated from his--”

“Missy, that’s rubbish. You just stole that pram from the baby’s mum, didn’t you.”

Missy makes a theatrical huff. “Oh alright. You got me. This little chap will get me the Kishnaria Diamond.”

“Why in the name of Rassilon would you want  _ that _ ?” the Doctor exclaims. “Wait. The Kishnaria Diamond opens the Hemetic Vault on Skull Moon.” The Doctor narrows his eyes. “What’s in the vault that you want enough to steal a child?”

Missy sniffs again. “A book. Everyone thinks that the book must have horrible secrets in it, or be valuable, and they’ve squirrelled it away. They have no idea how to decode it. I want it back.”

Missy tugs the stroller, and the Doctor tugs it back. “Why? What’s in it?”

“My shopping list.”

“Missy…” the Doctor threatens.

Missy reels off a list of nonsense. “Recipes for Grannies ginger snaps. How to stablise a black hole in three easy steps. Oh, alright. The location of a dark star that would power my TARDIS to the end of time.”

“Aha!”

Clara watches this with bemusement. But the child wakes and becomes restless. “This is all very interesting, but I think this little one needs to go back to his mummy. Assuming you didn’t kill her.” Clara looks daggers at Missy.

Missy just shrugs. “Might have. Didn’t bother to check.” She looks at Clara. “I never would never have given her to you if I’d known she’d make you this boring.” 

The Doctor ignores her and snatches the pushchair away. He strides over the concourse. 

“So sentimental. He’s been hanging around wet human’s so long their soppy morals have leached under his skin.” 

Clara shakes her head, and follows the Doctor. Journey stares at Missy for a moment and then follows.

“Aren't you even a bit curious about that dark star?” she calls. “Unlimited energy. The ability to manipulate matter. Just think. We could do anything!”

“I’ve heard it all before. I don’t want to do anything with you.  _ Don’t  _ be here when we get back,” he calls over his shoulder.

When they reach the woman, she’s shaking her head groggily. 

“I think this little fellow belongs to you?” Clara says.

“Oh my gods! What happened?” 

The woman went pale as the Doctor explained. 

“May I scan your son? Perhaps I can determine why the Crown Prince wants him. The scan’s harmless.”

The woman agrees, and the Doctor scans the little boy, now awake and gurgling, with his sonic glasses. “Ah. I see.”

“What? What’s wrong with him?”

“Nothing. He’s perfectly fine. But he does carry a genetic marker that the Tyronian Royal family have been trying to breed into their offspring unsuccessfully for many years. Looks like a spontaneous mutation achieved what genetic engineering failed to do.”

“Oh. Will they try to take him again?” The woman looks at the Doctor with worried eyes. 

“Not if I transmute the protein marker and reverse the mutation.”

“Can you do that?”

“Already done.” 

The woman hugs the Doctor, to his obvious discomfort. 

“I’ve sent a cease and desist notice to the Prince,” Clara adds. “Just so he knows what we’ve done. Told him to take it up with the Last of the Time Lords if he has a problem.”

The little boy, a head full of soft curls, gurgles adorably. Clara feels a quiver inside her, that she’s knows _isn’t_ her baby, it’s far too soon for that, but all the same she rests her hand briefly on her tummy. This time next year, they’ll have a new born of their own. The idea should scare the hell out of her, but it doesn’t. She feels happy in a way she can’t quite describe. It’s just  _ right. _ This child. Their child, part human, part Time Lord. She wants it more than ever. 

As they part, Journey looks at both of them and laughs. “ _ This _ is a quiet evening out?” 

Clara threads her arm through Journey’s. “Trust me. This is  _ tame _ .”

#

They settle in the grandest multiplex Clara has ever seen, and watch a film about a war that happened a long time ago in a galaxy far away. Clara whispers, “Seriously, will this franchise ever end?”

The Doctor leans close to her and whispers. “I think they’re still making them long after Earth’s sun explodes.”

“That'll please a few people.” The heat of his lips close to her ear makes her shudder. She turns and clumsily finds his lips with hers. 

"Oh, get a room," Journey hisses.  

He takes her hand, and they settle together in the darkness.

Later, when they have returned to the TARDIS and bid Journey goodnight, they find each other in the darkness again. His room is cool and tidier than she expected, his bed softer, although the lights are low and she supposes she won’t see the room properly until morning, but she can’t think about that now as his lips are hot against hers and she quivers and sighs against him.

“I can’t believe it took us this long to find each other,” she whispers.

“Nor can I.” His fingers work magic, and she breathes in everything he is. Wild adventure. Hope in the dark. Kindness. Fury and pain, all of him, and all of her, moving as one. She's never felt this way before. 

“I’ve loved you a very long time, Clara Oswald,” he says, as she drifts off to sleep.

“Never stop,” she says sleepily. “As long as we’re together. I don’t mean forever. Just for now.” She hopes she’s explained what she’s feeling. That she knows he’s eternal, and doesn’t expect him to love her forever. Just love her well in  _ this _ life, but she's too tired to think clearly.

He pulls her close, but says nothing, and as she slips happily to sleep in his arms, she has the feeling he's happy too.      


	12. Wanting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every one wants something. The Doctor wants Clara, and Clara wants him right back. But the universe never makes things easy.

The Doctor jolts awake with Clara, perfectly naked, at his side. It’s a strange thing, this wanting he feels around her. He’s no stranger to sex, but it’s never mattered all that much to him. Oh, he turns in a good performance, because he’s not a complete ass, and if it mattered to a partner then who was he to argue, but he’s never felt the desperate tug of desire he’s feeling right now. She is hypnotic, sleeping silently beside him. He’s almost afraid of the feeling, but he’s more afraid to stop. He wants to seal this moment in amber and preserve it for all time, but he also wants to see her wake, and watch her smile, and feel the swell of her belly as his child grows inside her. A child. Who would have thought it? Something flutters in his chest and breaks out in a soppy grin. 

She opens her eyes. “What are you smiling about?” she asks, beautiful and sleepy. 

“Nothing. Everything.” He wants to touch her, and the feeling is so strong it’s like a compulsion he can’t shake off. He kisses her gently, and feels her smile under his lips. 

“Good morning,” she whispers, pressing herself closer to him, as if she’s caught in the same thrall. “I wasn’t sure you’d be here when I woke up.”  
“I didn’t want to miss this,” he says, kissing her neck. “I can’t promise I’ll always manage to be here when you wake up, but, if you’d like, I'll be here when you go to sleep. Mostly. Often, anyway.” 

She raises an eyebrow. 

“I don't mean just for… although that was amazing... oh, god I'm messing this up already, aren't I.” 

She laughs, and takes pity on the poor babbling fool he's making of himself. “It's all right. I understand. You don’t need anywhere near as much sleep as I do. I'm sure that’ll come in handy when junior wants feeding at 3 am.” Her eyes suddenly widen. “You think we should do the scanning thing again? See how things are progressing?” 

He keeps kissing her neck, but places a hand flat on her belly. There it is again, that fluttering in his chest. “Everything's fine,” he tells her. 

Desire has a grip on him now, and he can tell by the way she's softly sighing that the wanting has gotten hold of her too. 

“Scanning can wait,” she whispers, and suddenly she's on top of him, pressing him down into the bed, kissing him hard. The wanting grabs hold of him tighter than ever, and there's only one way this will end. He closes his eyes for a moment as she engulfs him, and he whispers her name like it’s a prayer. 

***

The Crown Prince Venlofax, Prime Regent of the Tyronian Cluster, sits in his father's ante-room in the Winter Palace, in front of a bank of aging monitors, scowling at the data in front of him. 

The doors that lead from the High Chamber open and his father shuffles through, walking stick clacking on the flagstones, with Master of the Guards Helleman inevitably at his heels. Like the tech, his father is ailing now, but he's still the same bastard he always was. Worse now in some ways, as his temper is shorter, and he’s taken to having that brute Helleman dish out the blows he once delivered himself. His father always hit hard, but there was a random nature to where the blows landed, and if you moved fast enough you could sometimes save yourself from the worst. The sadistic Helleman delivers blows with clinical precision, calculated to inflict maximum pain. 

“I want good news, boy,” his father snaps.

Venlofax grits his teeth and pulls himself up to his full height. He is twenty four years old, Prime Regent of the worlds in the Tyronian Cluster, and no one, even his father, should make him cower. 

“There’s been a development,” he says carefully. The woman he’d struck a deal with to deliver the brat had disappeared without a trace, and when he sent another team the mutation in the child’s DNA had vanished. 

“Always, always a problem with you, Flax. You told me you’d have the child within days. That his DNA would be the key to curing our bloodline of this curse.” He waves his hands up and down his skinny frame. He is forty years old, and half the man he was a year ago, wasted and frail. The best doctors in the galaxy were wringing their hands, and the same fate awaited Venlofax unless a way could be found to stablise the genetic drift in his DNA. His father was pacing the room. His eyes had that tinge of madness that meant he was revving up for an explosion. “I gave you the full resources of the Tyronian Science Institute, not to mention the Black Legion and now I’m to believe you’ve lost him? I think you want to let me die and save the cure for yourself.” He grinds his cane into the floor, twisting the silver knob in his withered hand.

Helleman stands impassively, chest covered in fine chainmail, his big hands clasped behind his back. Those fists were like iron, and could deliver a jab to Venlofax's median nerve that would leave him in agony for days. 

“No sire!” abandoning his dignity in favour of self preservation, Venlofax throws himself at his father’s feet. “I know exactly where the boy is. But the genetic marker has been... interfered with.” He knew who’d done it, too, but he wasn’t about to tell his father that. The last of the Time Lords altered his son’s DNA, so with the right inducement, the Time Lord could change it back. 

“Liar!” the king raged, his face red with anger. “The High Council meets in five days. You better deliver on your promises.” The king turned to leave the chamber. “Helleman. Help my idiot son up from the floor.”

Venlofax leapt to his feet before Helleman got close. 

The big warrior stopped in front of him, and bowed his head slightly. “Another time, your Highness.” 

Venlofax clamps his jaw shut, grinding his teeth. One day he would be king, and the very first order he would give, right after he danced over his father’s dead body, would involve Helleman, a set of hot pokers, and a gibbet outside the palace gates. 

But first, he’d set a trap to catch a Time Lord.


	13. Kally and Lewis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Crown Prince Venlofax lures the Doctor and Clara into a trap.

Venlofax rubs his chin, his fingertips stroking the wispy down that stubbornly refuses to graduate from fluff to anything approaching a beard. He makes up his facial hair’s poor show by pushing pounds in the palace gym, and his efforts, enhanced by the occasional multi-steroid booster, are gratifying. Broad chest, wide shoulders, cold heart, that's what Venlofax overheard an old groundsman say to his young niece, warning the girl to stay away from the prince. The very next day he had the gardener whipped and the whole family banished.

Venlofax stares at the aging tracking and surveillance network. It needs a huge overhaul. Another thing he'll sort out when he becomes king. His father has little time for this technology, instead pouring his wealth into biomedical research, but Venlofax knows an empire lives on the strength of its communication systems. 

Venlofax has no idea what possible motive the Time Lord had changing his child's DNA, but he will feel the full wrath of the House of Tyronia. No one does something for nothing, so he must have some kind of vested interest, although Venlofax couldn't begin to guess what it is. Information on the Time Lord himself is sketchy. It’s as if a large portion of the data about him was erased from the galactic hub, but stories still surface. He turns up in troubled corners of the universe, wearing different faces, and more often than not travelling with a young human woman. That, at least, Venlofax understands. 

He flicks through the most recent data. The boy and his mother are in hiding, but not hidden so well his spies couldn't find them, of course. If the interfering fool of a Time Lord is so concerned with the boy’s fate, then that’s a good a place to start.  

Venlofax opens a channel to the Tyronian Science Institute. “I need the scanning equipment, a ship, and technical support from the Eternia Project at my private airstrip first thing tomorrow morning.” 

“My Lord, with the greatest of respect, we need at least a week to arrange personnel and equipment," said a pale-faced administrator. The woman's eyes are weary, but spiked with fear. 

“The High Council meets in five days. Am I to assume you will explain the Institute’s woeful lack of preparedness to His Excellency? 

The administrator pales further. “Of course not. We will make every effort— "

“Just make sure you send someone who knows what they're doing this time,” Venlofax snaps, and closes the channel. 

***

Clara lays on a medical bed, while the Doctor runs a scan. It's been 72 hours since he and Journey worked their magic and stabilised the DNA of the tiny life burgeoning inside her. By now, either those cells have successfully implanted in her womb or they failed, leaving no trace as her body metabolized the amino acids and and proteins. It would be as if that spark of life never existed. Clara’s heart races. She's never given much thought to being a mother, and she certainly never imagined it could happen with the Doctor. She's scared, yes, of what it means for their lives to have a child, but at the same time she’s hoping desperately that the fragile life they've created together has clung to existence.  _ Please _ .  _ Please let this happen _ .     

“You don't need to hold your breath,” he says.  

Clara laughs. “Was I?” She looks at him, and he’s virtually hopping from foot to foot, chewing his bottom lip and he runs the scans and tests. “Don’t keep me in suspense,” she pleads.

He squints at the screen, and for a moment her heart stops, her throat tightens. Then his face cracks a smile. He turns the screen so she can see it. A tiny red dot flashes safe and sound inside the protective curve of her womb. 

She's choked up, and so is he. He rushes to her side, his pale eyes glistening. 

“I can't believe it,” she whispers. He has the biggest grin on his face she's seen in ages. 

His eyes seem impossibly hopeful. Two thousand years fall away, and she's right back at his bedside again, in the dark, speaking his own words to him, telling him fear can make him kind and he doesn't need a gun to be brave.  

He takes her hand. “You're really sure? This is what you want?” he asks. “You know who I am. You know what kind of life I live. I can't change that.” 

She smiles. “I don't want to change anything, and yes this is absolutely this is what I want. This is amazing. I mean it’s terrifying, but amazing.” She's babbling a bit, almost gushing the thoughts churning through her head out into the world. “God, I don't know what my dad's going to say. And Linda.” She pauses. “You remember Linda.”

He blushes. “That wasn't actually me, you know.” 

Clara wraps her arms around his neck and raises an eyebrow. “Naked on Christmas day? Oh, that absolutely was you. You told me, remember. ‘He's me. I'm him’.” She laughs at his discomfort. 

“So I take it this is some kind of package deal? No chance of us just running away and…” He kisses her neck, no doubt trying to distract her from the domestic arrangements. 

She laughs. “No chance at all. Dad already lost mum. He isn't going to lose me too, not while I have a choice in the matter.”

He pulls back so they are nose to nose. “I've been slapped by a few mothers in my time, but fathers…” Unable to hold still, he sets off pacing around the medical bay, picking up a scanner and turning it over in his hands.  “I can see it now. ‘Hello, I’m Clara’s boyfriend. I might look twenty years older than your daughter, but in fact I'm a two thousand year old time travelling alien. Oh, and I've just made her pregnant.’ He’s going to love me.” He puts the scanner down on the unit and looks mournfully at Clara. 

Clara pulls a face, ignoring the pleading his eyes. There is no getting away from this, for either of them. She isn’t going to abandon her father and Gran. “To be fair, it's not my dad we need to worry about.” 

***

Journey Blue is in the console room. The Doctor has given her free run of his ship, and takes shockingly few security precautions. She's still a soldier, and sees the potential for Sabotage and Mayhem everywhere. But those are idle thoughts, she's not behind enemy lines and she isn’t planning anything nefarious. In fact, she doesn't know  _ what _ she wants to do next. The Doctor offered to take her anywhere she choses, but she can't decide and they seem happy for her to stay. Journey likes Clara, now she’s had the chance to get to know her, and the Time Lord himself, well he's gruff around the edges, but Clara softens him. And of course there's Alfie, the mutt she found curled in the corner of the console room when she arrived. 

“We’re both refugees, eh, boy?” He raises his head and wags his tail. 

A sound from the console catches her attention. The time machine is a bewildering array of unfathomable technology, but a swiveling monitor on the central console is flashing a message on screen, marked “Urgent Transmission”. She considers finding the Doctor and Clara, but it's easy enough to open a channel and play the message, so that's what she does.

A woman, the woman from the cinema Journey quickly realises, appears on-screen. She’s holding her son and her face is creased with worry. “Doctor, I don’t know if you can hear me, but I need your help. Whatever you did to Lewis is making him sick. The medical staff here say you started a …” She glances down and reads uncertainly from a scrap of paper in her hand, “...polymer restructuring cascade that’s destabilising the nucleotides in his DNA.” She chews her bottom lip, and then goes on. “I know you were trying to help, and you all seem like caring people. Please fix this. Sending our coordinates now.” Her eyes dart around the room and she crumples the sheet of paper tight in her hand. Lewis starts to cry. She rocks him, then turns back to the screen. “I don’t understand any of this! I need your help!  Please— ” The transmission cuts out. 

Journey curses under her breath and dashes off to find the Doctor. 

***

The Doctor tuts as he fusses with the TARDIS data bank. “Polymer restructuring cascade indeed,” he huffs. “I did no such thing. What do they think I am, an amature?” With a sharp flick of his wrist, he sets the TARDIS in motion. 

“You realise it’s almost certainly a trap, right?” Journey says, staring at the central column as it begins to rise and fall. 

“Of course it is. You know the best thing to do with a trap?”

“Avoid it?” Journey optimistically offers.

The Doctor and Clara exchange glances. “We like to think on the hoof,” Clara says.“Whether it's a trap or not, that poor woman needs our help.”

Journey couldn't deny that. “Is this what you do? Hop around the galaxy looking for desperate situations to fling yourself into?”

Clara shrugs. “Pretty much. Although I half-suspect this is an excuse to put off going to see my dad and stepmum.”

The Doctor raises an eyebrow. 

Clara and the Doctor might be content with reconnaissance on the ground, but Journey has enough missions under her belt to understand the importance of knowing the terrain and the enemy. As the TARDIS spins through the vortex, she uses a nearby terminal to look up the Crown Prince Venlofax and those coordinates. She does not like what she sees one little bit. 

***

**_Twelve hours previously, on a passenger freighter in the Corrilious Cluster._ **

As a second class passenger freighter, the  _ Lothello _ is hot, crowded and noisy. Kally Beckinsdale’s instinct is to stay in the cabin out of sight, but Lewis frets and fusses and literally drives her crazy in the cramped room, until she can stand it no more. She straps him into his stroller and dares a quick dash around the bustling decks packed with passengers and the tiny on-board shops selling everything from food, clothes and jewellery she could never afford in a million years. He settles down nicely, and is happily watching the world go by, and Kally was considering grabbing a bite to eat from a Qwick Chips stall when she feels something hard and sharp pressing into her back.  

“Keep walking, Miss,” a voice whispers in her ear. 

“I'll scream for security,” she hisses. 

“Fine,” says the man. “This is a Gen37 nerve agent. You'll be pumped full of it before the first transport cop puts down their mug of covvee.” 

Kally swears silently. “What do you want?”

“Just walk straight ahead. We have a suit of rooms on this dump of a cargo scow.”

Kally knows once she’s inside a suit and out of the public spaces, she’s done for. She winds her way through the crowds on the promenade deck, and where the people thin out next to a shop selling tacky souvenirs, she sees her chance. She aims a stomp-kick at her assailant's ankle, and then lurches forward in a desperate dash. Her heart thunders. Lewis babbles something that sounds like delight at this impromptu race across the deck. She steers the stroller at a bunch of people. If she can lose herself in the crowd and then reach one of the lifts, well, this ship has fourteen decks and she can keep on the move and maybe stay safe. She wouldn’t be able to go back to her cabin, but at least she had the sense to bring her credit chip and phone with her, and her nappy back was well packed. She makes a furious rush past the last of the crowd. Then she sees Venlo, standing in the middle of the deck, hands on his hips. He was sweet,  when she first met him, sort of shy, or so she’d thought. He doesn’t look either now, flanked by two burly guards with military haircuts and sour faces.

“Running away with my child, again?” he says, tutting.

“You showed no interest in him, or me, until it turned out he has something you need. My son isn’t your science experiment!” Heat rose in Kally’s cheeks.         

Venlo smirked. “He’s my son. I have rights.”

“No. You have responsibilities. And since you showed no sign of living up to those, you forfeit your rights as far as I’m concerned.”

Venlo squats in front of the stroller. “Hello, kid. I’m your papa.”

Kally tries to yank the stroller away, but feels a prick and a cold rush in her back. The man from before is at her shoulder, straight-faced. The deck swims. Arms hold her up, and she hears little more. 

***

Clara can see that Journey is not impressed by their planning, or lack thereof.

She grabs Clara’s arm. “Can I tell you one more time that I think this is a terrible idea? This place is crawling with civilians—” 

“ _ We’re _ civilians,” the Doctor points out. “We’re going to negotiate like reasonable people, not conduct a covert operation.”

Clara can see it both ways. This is how they roll, but a bit of forward planning isn't the worst idea she's heard.

***

The Crown Prince Venlofax sighs and picks at a bit of lint on his trousers. His father would chide him for slovenly dress if he were at the palace. Still, no one here will rat him out to the old man. The entertainment screen plays an inane cartoon, and the kid has gone from tearing around the suite babbling to sitting morosely on the mother’s lap. How much longer would he be subjected to this intolerable waiting in such dull company?  

Finally there’s a knock at the door. He waves at a tall woman in the military uniform of the Dark Legion, whos name he forgot or never knew, to open the door. She bows politely, but says nothing as she steps back to let the Doctor and Clara Oswald in.

The prince stays sitting in his chair, while Kally and her son huddle miserably in the corner of the room. Kally’s eyes are red, and her face taught. She shakes her head almost imperceptibly as the Doctor and Clara glance her way. The Time Lord looks faintly ridiculous in dark glasses indoors, an affectation Venlofax can’t abide. It smacks of disrespect.  

“You, Doctor,” began the Prince, “decided to interfere with the lawful business of genetic rectification, as laid down by the Royal Charter of 2987.89.”

“There's no such thing,” the Doctor scoffs. “And even if there were, stealing children from their mothers is abhorrent. I'd break any law in the universe that allows that, a hundred times over.” He marches around the room, eyeing the scanning equipment taking in the decor. He seems to have a particular interest in a gaudy painting of a bowl of fruit on one of the walls. 

“You are interfering with my cultural heritage, not to mention a medical necessity! Don't you Time Lords have some kind of non-interference principle?” Venlofax says, standing up. 

“This is not Star Trek,” Clara says scornfully, moving over and placing a hand on Kally’s shoulder. “This is the real world and when we see injustice, we stop it.”

The Doctor peers over his glasses. “If you have some kind of medical condition, I’ll try to help. But you need to hand Kally and Lewis over to us.” 

Venlofax laughs. “I think you misunderstand. It's quite simple. You reverse your interfering and reactivate the boy’s genetic markers, and you can have Kally. But the boy of a Royal House. He belongs to  _ me _ .” Kally pales, and holds Lewis tight. The boy whines and wiggles. “You’re a bigger fool than I imagined if you think I’ll let you just walk out of here with them both.”

The Doctor sighs. “I did rather hope you’d see reason.” He shoots Clara a glance. “Then we wouldn’t have to do this.” He taps the side of his glasses, and at the same time Clara moves close to Kally, shielding the boy and his mother by turning her back to the wall. 

The wall explodes, sending the picture of a fruit bowl scattering in a million directions. Venlofax finds himself in the grip of his bodyguards, who shield him with their bodies. 

“No, stop them!” he yells, but Clara, Kally and Lewis are already though the gap in the wall. 

The Doctor stands for a second looking back. His face is stone, dark and terrible. “I’m warning you. Leave people I care about alone.” 

Then he’s gone, and all that is left in the room is the acrid smell of a laser pistol discharge, dust and plaster swirling in the air, and a rushing wind and the sound of demons screaming. There’s a flashing blue light for a second too. Then silence.

***

Kally stares, bewildered, a smattering of dust in her hair, around the TARDIS. Lewis is screaming with fright, although probably more due to the explosion than dimensional incredulity.  

Journey puts her laser pistol back in it’s holster with a satisfied grin. “Yeah. It’s a mind bender, this place, isn’t it?” she says to Kally.

Kally opens her mouth, and then closes it again. She rocks Lewis to soothe him, but he’s not having any of that, and screams louder. She blinks and gathers her wits. “Um. Have you rescued or kidnapped us?”

Clara guides the poor woman to a pilot’s chair adjacent to the console. “ _ Definitely _ rescued. Don’t worry. You’re safe now.” She rubs Lewis’ back gently.  

Kally shakes her head, dazed. “I don’t know what I did to deserve your help, you barely know me. But, can I say, I’m very, very grateful.”

“Here’s the thing,” the Doctor says, smothered in dust, looking up from the console. “You don’t have to do anything to deserve help. You just have to need it. That’s enough.”

***

Velofax crashes his fist into the wall, right above the head of the scientist currently cowering over his scanner. “ _ This _ is the Institutes finest? You’re no more use than a cobber eel in a foundry!” 

The man stammers, “But, but Sire— ” 

“Silence!” he roared. “We just lost the best chance of stopping the genetic declamation we’ve had in years!” 

“Please, your Highness,” said the man, trembling. “The boy offered us a partial solution, that would advance treatment. But look at this.”

Venlofax stares at the screen, showing complicated graphs and tables that mean nothing to him. “What, fool? Speak!”

“These readings show there was an unusual genetic profile in the room.”

That got Venlofax’s attention. “The Time Lord or the human?”

“Neither. And both. The woman is in the early stages of pregnancy with a hybrid embryo. The DNA of that unborn child could purge the genetic defects and restore the royal bloodline to full health.” 

Venlofax paces among the debris in his dusty apartments to digest this new information. Perhaps all is not lost. He underestimated the Time Lord once, but he won’t make that humiliating mistake again. “We need a better trap,” he says, “That hybrid is mine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leave me a comment if you are still enjoying this story and want to see more!


	14. Change

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clara and the Doctor make a visit to Clara's dad, and then take Journey to a planet that has good memories for her. Things, however have changed for the worse.

“Dad?” Clara says nervously into her phone. “Is it okay to pop around?” It’s Tuesday night and Linda will be at her yoga class. It’s an ideal opportunity to get the deed done, but for a split second Clara hopes he’ll say it's not convenient.   

“Of course,” her father replies. 

“Good. Ok. I’m... bringing someone.” Clara glances at the Doctor. This might be a terrible idea, but not as terrible as denying her growing bump. It’s almost four months now, and she can't hide it much longer. And she doesn't want to hide it, not from her dad and gran. She wants to share her joy with people she cares about. Talk about names and pick out a stroller. 

“We don't have to go right now,” the Doctor says after she hangs up. “We can visit that Tuesday any time we want.” He gets that wild look in his eyes and he starts hovering around the console, fiddling with dials, smiling to himself. That means he's cooking up an adventure, and Clara could easily be swept away with him. No. Stick with the plan.   

She clears her throat and says lightly, “I know what you’re trying to do. We’ll get distracted and suddenly it will be months later.” She moves next to him and gives him a stern look.

He opens his mouth to object, but she captures his hand before he can pace away, and presses his palm to her belly. “Please. I understand that it's not your favourite thing to do, but I need my family to be part of this. If we put it off any longer we won't be able to explain…”

The Doctor doesn't try to wiggle away, rather he gently touches her face, his blue-grey eyes softening, as if when it boils down to it, he can deny her nothing. “I know,” he whispers in that soft accent that never fails to send her pulse racing. “Too many awkward questions if we let this bump get any bigger before we go.” He kisses her lightly on the forehead. “We’ll go now.” 

***

Dave Oswald is washing up. Linda dashed off to yoga after barking instructions about him fixing tomorrow's packed lunches, and he’s just about to start on that when the doorbell rings. He dries his hands on the tea towel flung over his shoulder, and goes to answer the door. 

“Hi Dad,” Clara says, smiling. Dave looks briefly at his daughter, and then his gaze shifts to the man standing next to her, and travels up over black boots and trousers, a velvet red jacket, and up further, past a craggy face, bushy eyebrows to wild silver hair. 

“This is the Doctor,” Clara says brightly.

“Another one?” Dave offers. Unwanted images of a bizarre Christmas dinner flood his mind, and worse, how oddly Clara behaved in the tumultuous months that followed. Sometimes euphoric, often exhausted, and at other times so deeply unhappy it sliced him to see it. But she just wouldn’t talk to him about any of it. He’d hoped things would get better after she met Danny, but she seemed more distant than ever. And when Danny died, well Dave was ashamed to say he of all people should have been there for her, but it was just too hard. She was so much like her mother it hurt, and he turned away, leaving his own mother to fill the emotional gap. 

Finally, Dave remembers his manners and sticks out his hand. “Hello,” he says to the tall stranger. 

The Doctor shakes his hand awkwardly, and strides past him into the house. 

Dave puts a hand on Clara’s arm. “You got a thing for doctors now?”

Clara pulls him into a hug, holding him very tightly, as if they haven’t seen each other in months. “It’s so good to see you, Dad.”

“Woah! You saw me two days ago.” 

“It feels longer,” she says. 

Dave stares at the Doctor’s back. He mouths ‘who is he?’ at Clara, but she just clenches her teeth into the approximation of a smile. They both trail behind the Doctor into the lounge. 

“So,” Dave says to them both, somewhat at a loss. “Do you two work together?” 

“Yes,” says the Doctor. At the same time Clara says, “No.”

They stare at one another. 

The Doctor says, “I mean, we work well together. In the sense of being together... in that it works well, we think, don’t we, Clara?” his voice tails off.  

Dave stares at Clara. He knows his daughter well enough to have a shrewd idea of what her biting her thumb like that means. She's nervous. He looks from his daughter to this wild-haired stranger, much older than her, and a sinking feeling hits him in the chest. “Clara, he’s… ”

“Scottish?” she says sharply.

“Actually I’m not from—”

Clara grabs the Doctor’s hand. “Yes you are. You are definitely Scottish.” Clara turns back to Dave. “ _ Anyway _ . We have news.”

Dave’s not sure he wants to hear it. “Um. Cup of tea? Coffee? Something stronger?” He is delaying what he fears is coming next, because Clara turning up with a man twice her age “with news" really isn't the best kick off to his Tuesday evening.  

“Not for me,” the Doctor says, he brushes his fingers across the lilies Linda placed on the welsh dresser,  and then examines the Monet print on the wall, before glancing at Dave. “You might want to pour yourself one, though.”

Dave slumps on the sofa, his suspicions all but confirmed. “All right. You have my attention.” He glares at the Doctor, trying for intimidating, but he’s fairly sure the hordes of Genghis Khan would have trouble intimidating this one. 

Clara takes a deep breath. “The Doctor is my boyfriend. And, um, we're expecting a baby.” 

Dave isn't sure what he's supposed to say to that. Silence stretches out. “You're not worried about the age gap, then?” He glares at the Scotsman’s back, who is looking out of the French doors into the garden.

“Of the many things to worry about in the universe, and believe me there are creatures out there that would boil your brain by looking at you and whole planets that would eat you alive, the apparent differences in our ages isn't something we’re particularly bothered about.” 

“Apparent? So your  _ not _ twice her age, then?” Dave snaps.

“No. I think it's safe to say that's an underestimate of our age difference by a factor of umpf—” 

Clara elbows him in the ribs. 

Dave does a rapid mental calculation, and when he's gathered his wits, he registers that he's going to be a grandfather, and Clara looks happy, the smile on her face is broad and genuine when she looks at this strange man. That's what really matters, he supposes. Things change. She's not a little girl any more, far from it. He sighs and pulls her into an awkward hug. “As long as you're happy, love.” 

“I am, Dad.” 

“Then I'm happy too.” He turns to this Doctor chap. “Well, I guess we should get on first name terms. I'm Dave.” 

The Scotsman grins. “You can call me the Doctor.”  

#

“ _ This _ is the colony you and your late brother dreamed of escaping to?” Clara exclaims.

At Journey’s request, Doctor brought them to Hellias Six, as Journey wanted to see if the reality matched the memory of those idyllic childhood holidays she and her brother spent here. Before they were soldiers. Before war took their parents and drenched her hands in blood. Back then, the countryside was lush and fertile, the summer sky streaked with indigo and greens where the light defracted from a cluster of turquoise lakes. The green skinned natives were unfailingly welcoming and friendly. The only sounds she recalls is the rustle of leaves and the calls of wrenchucks nesting in the trees. Not any more. Now the horizon is thick with smoke, and as they approach the crest of a hill there is an ominous clanging and rumbling. The smell of smoke and ozone fills the air. 

They all crouch low on the hillside. Journey squints into the distant haze and shadows. The Doctor pulls a pair of field lenses from his unfathomable pockets, and after a moment of silence passes them to Clara.

“What are they doing down there?” Clara asks. 

A hint of impatience and dread coils in Journey’s belly. What happened here? How could a planet go from paradise to this smokey hell in a few short years? 

“Strip mining,” says the Doctor. “See the readings inside the glasses? They show scattered traces of borocetrazine on the surface, and the smoke billowing from that chiney is loaded with particulate, so my guess is they’re plundering this planet's natural resources. Lots of races use borocetrazine to reinforce the hulls of warships. It’s a valuable commodity.”

Journey takes the glasses from Clara. The valley she remembers is gone, the green stripped back to brown scars across the landscape. Ugly piles of rock tower between what looks like the mouth of a mine and a squat factory unit.  A group of figures emerge from the mine, like the earth is spitting them up into the dusty landscape. Most shuffle along wearily, while two taller, broader creatures seem to be standing guard. 

“Who are they?” 

“Those guards you see are Saranites. Mercenaries for hire. Vicious lot. Not very smart. There will probably be one genetically enhanced individual acting as leader, keeping things in order.”

“Keep what in order?” Clara whispers. 

“Slaves.” Journey’s throat is tight. When she visited, the people on this planet were gentle, owned little in the way of advanced technology, and welcomed visitors. That was part of the charm, and why she and her brother daydreamed about coming back. Now the people are chained, dressed in rags, their skin covered in grime and dust. Journey wants to throw up, but she can't look away. By the largest pile of rocks, close to the mine shaft, a frail-looking, undernourished man stumbles and falls to the floor. A young woman dashes to his side, hauling him up while she shoots desperate glances at the nearest Saranite. Its skin is dusty white, with a row of ridges across its forehead, small eyes and straggly grey hair. It’s impossible to determine its gender beneath an armoured grey uniform. The creature raises a weapon, but the pair huddled on the floor begin struggling to their feet. The young woman says something, raises her palms, and the guard throws back its head and laughs. Its eyes are blood red.

“We have to do something,” Journey hisses through gritted teeth. 

“You're right,” says the Doctor, briskly. “We need to get back to the TARDIS. It isn't safe here. He glances at Clara as he speaks, and Journey wonders, not for the first time, how parenthood will change them. He hardly seems the same man who just a few days ago cavalierly plunged himself and his friend into the guts of a Dalek. She has to remember that years have passed for them since that day when his safety briefing amounted to “don't be lasagne”. Their relationship has changed beyond recognition. 

Clara put her hand on his arm. “Wait. We're not just leaving!”

“No. This is a plan--”

“Doctor…” 

“No, really, I have a plan. We go back to the TARDIS and check for ships. It’s no good us trying anything if there’s a battlefleet in orbit.”

“What then?” Clara demands, looking at him skeptically.

He blusters a little. “Well, then we come up with the next part of the plan.”

“Are you trying to bench me?” Clara’s face creases with annoyance.

Journey almost laughs, but a sharp nudge from behind wipes the smile from her face. She knows the feel of a weapon in her back. 

Cursing silently, she raises her hands. These easy weeks in the TARDIS have made her sloppy. Uncle would bust her ass for getting caught like this. 

The Doctor pulls Clara behind him before she can argue. 

Up close, the Saranite is about as foul as Journey guessed from a distance. Its facial hair has food stuck in it, and there's a wet animal kind of odour about its body. It grunts, and waves its gun, indicating they should proceed down the hill towards the mine. 

The Doctor tries to take Clara’s hand, and doesn't look at all pleased about this development. Clara, for her part, shakes her head slightly, and doesn't let him hold her hand. Journey thinks this is wise on Clara’s part. First rule of guerilla action: don't give the enemy more leverage than you absolutely need to. How many of the Doctor’s enemies would love to exploit weak spots he might reveal? The soldier in Journey is pretty sure Clara Oswald, and the tiny life inside her, is a weak spot to end them all.   

#

The guard doesn't speak as it shoves them down the hill towards the mine. As they approach the silent workers, the smell gets worse and the metallic crashing from deep within the earth can be felt underfoot as well as heard. The terrain is rough; grassless and scattered with scree, and Clara is tempted to take the Doctor’s hand a couple of times over the steepest parts, but she resists. Not that she has anything to prove, but he's never felt the need to offer before. Somehow accepting will make her feel more vulnerable, not less, and beside, she doesn’t feel ill or weak. If anything the last few days she’s felt invigorated. 

When they reach the foot of the hill, the guard stops suddenly and taps a bulky metal band around its wrist. The air shimmers ahead. The guard waves them through and then follows, pausing for a moment to reverse the action. The Doctor kicks a pebble in the direction they have come. The air ripples and crackles. “Forcefield," he mutters.

The Saranite grunts. Another guard approaches and makes a quick search of their pockets, relieving them of the sonic glasses, the field binoculars they looked through, and the assorted detritus of the Doctor’s pockets. Then the Doctor is shoved towards the group clustered at the mine head. Most of the workers don't even look their way, they just continue to unload rocks from the metal carts sitting on rails that lead back to the mine, their eyes empty, hands black, fingernails torn and cracked. There were probably twenty or more of them in all, guarded by four Saranites. It seems inconceivable to Clara that people would be forced to toil this way, with their bare hands. 

The creature grunts again, and points at one of the full trolleys. “Not much of a conversationalist, are you?” the Doctor says.

In reply, the Saranite says, “Work.”

A young woman, maybe in her late teens, although it is hard to tell under the layers of grime, glances their way. Her long red hair is pulled into a rough ponytail. It’s the same girl who helped the fallen man, earlier. She offers the thinnest of smiles before turning back to her work, hauling a rock from the bottom of a trolly with strength that belies her thin frame. 

“You better get working if you want to avoid the lash,” she says. “One of you stay with me, and the others help Jamal push that empty trolly back into the mine.”  She indicates a tall man who is straining to move an empty cart back up hill towards the mine.

Clara can see the anger in the Doctor’s eyes as he takes in the brutal environment they find themselves in, and then looks down at her belly. She worries he might do something rash before they have really sized the place up. She squeezes his hand quickly. 

“I’ll be fine. Don’t worry. We need to find out what’s going on here. Go do as she says, and I’ll find out all I can from her.”

The Doctor looks doubtful. 

A pale Saranite guard moves a step closer, a cruel energy baton powering up in its alabaster hands, as sparks of blue energy crackle from its tip. 

Jamal slowly heaves the trolly up the track, but it’s clear he needs help. 

“Really, just go,” Clara hisses. 

The Doctor nods, and he and Journey start off towards the trolly.

Clara grabs a rock and moves closer to where the young woman is placing hers on a conveyor belt. 

“Thanks. I’m Clara,” she whispers. 

“Kiry,” the young woman says, not looking her way. Clara falls into step beside her, mimicking what she does as Kiry continues to pull rocks from the trolly and pile them onto the conveyor. Dust flies in her face, and the rattle of the conveyor disappearing into a hole in the grey building right in front of them means it’s hard to hear when Kiry speaks. “You’re not from around here.”

“No. We just arrived.”

“I thought we were off the tourist route these days.”

“We didn’t know. The last time my friend visited, she said it was… idyllic. What happened?”

“Your friend has a long memory. Hellias hasn’t been idyllic in forty years. Not since the occupation.”

“Those Saranites?”

Kiry looked up, her brown eyes hard. “No. They’re just the muscle who work in the prison camps. It’s the Hek’Ten who invaded our world and never left.”

“This is a prison?”

“Prison camp. Labour camp. Call it what you want. Anyone who disagrees with the Hek’Ten find themselves here.”

“Is that what you did? Disagreed with the Hek’Ten?”

Kiry leaned closer, her voice low. “You could say that. My resistance cell blew up a Hek’Ten garrison, while our leaders tried to seize back control of the senate building. We failed, and here I am.” There is a rough, bitter edge to her voice as she speaks. 

“I’m sorry.”

“Save your pity. Our leaders were all hanged in the market square in Kapel Province. Those of us not important enough to make an example of were scattered throughout the labour camp system.”

“So you’re all alone here?”

Kiry shoots Clara a suspicious look. “Why are you so interested? Where are you from, anyway? Not from Hellias Six, or any of the surrounding human colonies.” Kiry paused and ran a hand over Clara’s leather jacket, and then she takes Clara’s hand, turning her palms over and inspecting her nails. “You have the hands of a teacher or cleric, not a farmer.”

Clara raised an eyebrow. “That’s remarkably perceptive. We’re not farmers.”

Kiry sniffed. “You better lose the jacket, and rough your clothes up a bit before Commandant Galltep spots you.” Kiry scoops a layer of dust from the bottom of the trolly, and smudges it over Clara’s hands.

“Who’s Galltep?” Clara asks, trying not to wince as Kiry goes on to dirty her face.  

“The Saranite leader. The only one of them who has more than three brain cells firing together. Always thinking up new ways to make us suffer.”

The trolly is now empty, and Kiry shoves it down the track towards a U bend that will allow them to push it back up to the mine. Clara glances around for the Doctor and Journey, but they are nowhere to be seen. She frowns.

Kiry follows her glance. “Don’t worry, they’ll be with Jamal in the mine. We’ll probably see them on the way up. Give me a hand pushing this.”

To her surprise, pushing the trolly isn’t the strain she anticipates, and it lurches forwards. Kiry shoots her an appreciative sideways glance. “You’re stronger than you look.”

Clara smiles, and puts her back into pushing with Kiry. 

#

Clara doesn’t see the Doctor and Journey again until everyone is herded towards a field kitchen behind the mines. The camp’s inhabitants walk wearily up the hill, and line up for a plateful of what Kiry says is agrarian broth and simek bread, made from the limited local farmland not poisoned by the borocetrazine mining. 

The Doctor’s smile when he sees her is dazzling, but Journey puts a warning hand on his arm, and he visibly dampens his response. Sensible, but kind of a shame when he’s just started to open to her. Clara resists the urge to run to him, and keeps her tone casual when he asks, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she replies, and that part is no lie. She should feel weary, but she doesn’t. She and Kiry worked all afternoon and Clara never broke a sweat. She does feel worried though. She’s seen enough to know the camp is surrounded by a forcefield and heavily guarded by the Saranites. 

The Doctor, Journey and Clara sit on the dusty ground, all three of them huddled together as far away from the Saranite guard as they can manage. “What are we going to do?” Clara asks.

“Well, Journey is all for murdering the guards with their own weapons and making a break back to the TARDIS.”

Clara hears a scuffle beside her, and Kiry squats down. “You try that and you’ll be dead before you get the forcefield down. And you know what they’ll do to the rest of us after that?”

The Doctor turns his stormy gaze on Kiry. “That’s exactly what I told her.” 

Journey snorts, but says nothing. 

“You have a better plan?” Clara asks, hope rising in her chest. A plan that gets everyone out of this miserable camp.

“Working on it,” he says. He turns to Kiry, sizing her up. “I bet you know everything that happens around here, hmm?”

Kiry shrugs, but Clara knows he’s right. She still has fire in her eyes, not like many of the broken workers who move blankly from task to task.

The Doctor leans closer to Kiry. “What’s in the complex where the rocks disappear to?”

Kiry twitches her nose, as if considering whether or not to trust him. 

“Honestly, he’s our best way out of here,” Clara says. 

Kiry purses her lips, glances around, and then began speaking. “The borocetrazine is processed in there, and then sent to storage silos at the back ready to be taken off world.”

“How often does that happen?”

“Every three cycles. A ship is due in two days, if they stay on schedule.”

The Doctor stares at the forcefield running around the compound. Every few hundred yards there is a short control pylon. “Those pylons don’t look big enough to power the grid. Where are the generators?”

Kiry nodded, as if this is something she figured out too. “Underneath the processing plant. When I got here, old Jarko was still alive, and she was part of the labour crew that built the complex. She died not long after I arrived.”

“But not before she told you everything she knew,” the Doctor said quietly. 

Kiry’s eyes hardened, her voice flinty. “I’m not going to apologise for who I am. I’m not going to die here in this stinking hell hole, while my world is crawling with Hek-Ten scum, ripping the heart out of our land. Our fields were fertile. Now they make us grow  _ gava  _  on the best land, — a delicacy for them, but no nutritional value to us. We barely have enough land to keep our own people alive.” Kiry bared her teeth, almost spitting her words at the Doctor.

He nods. “Good,  _ good _ . Keep hold of that fire! Because we’re going to figure out a way to do something about all of it. Where do you think they took the things they confiscated from us when we arrived?”

“Probably Galltep’s office. I think our commandant sends anything of value to the Hek-Ten.”

They fall silent as a guard approaches, but the white-skinned Saranite barely glances their way, and Clara watches her friends instead. The Doctor is still looking at Kiry, impressed, she can tell. Kiry herself shoots a quick look at the guard, and in that swift glance Clara suspects Kiry takes in all she needs to know. Journey has her eyes on the guard’s weapon.

“How strong are they?” Journey asks as the guard passes out of earshot.

“Strong, but stupid. No initiative at all unless Galltep radios them.”

“Hmm,” the Doctor says. “Then it’s Galltep we have to take out. Kiry, how many people here can we count on?”

“A handful. Jamal, a few others. Some are willing but pretty weak. The rations they keep us on suck the life out of us.”

Kiry falls silent as a guard passes, closer this time, its boots casting dust all around, so that it stings Clara’s eyes and contaminates their food. Kiry flings her hand over the plate, and when the dust storm passes, she grimaces and continues to eat. Clara pushes her food away.

“Eat it,” Kiry tells her, firmly shoving the plate back under Clara’s nose. “You’ll be sorry if you don’t. Rations around here are unreliable at best.”

They continue to eat in silence, and when a shrill bell begins to ring, Clara, the Doctor and Journey follow Kiry and others to stack their bowls and trudge to the row of huts at the back of the compound.

They find themselves in a dimly lit hut filled with bunks. Beneath their feet are bare floorboards, and the beds are covered with thin sheets and rough blankets. 

There are many more bunks than there are people though. “There were more of you, before?” the Doctor asks.

Kiry nods. “We think this seam of borocetrazine must be almost worked out. They took about 30 of us last time the ore ship came. Rumor was they went to another mine up the coast.” Kiry disappears into a bunk, and seems to fall instantly asleep, leaving Clara, Journey and the Doctor staring at the beds. 

Journey shrugs. “I’ve slept in worse places.” She takes a dive for one of the lower bunks, along the back row next to the wall.  

“Lights out in two minutes,” calls a gruff voice. Clara glances at the Doctor. 

He pulls a disgruntled face. “I used to like bunk beds.” He takes Clara’s hand. “Now I know why Rory and Amy didn’t…”

Clara laughs. “You want to go on top?”

He doesn’t smile. “I think we can  _ both  _ fit down here.” He pulls the blanket back, and indicates that she should sleep next to the wall.

“Are you protecting me?”

“I thought you’ll be protecting  _ me _ ,” he quips, as she takes off her boots.

Clara isn’t fooled. She can see the concern in his eyes as she crawls into the bunk. He kicks off his own boots, and lays beside her. She touches his face gently.

“You know I’m fine, don’t you? Honestly, I haven’t felt as good in ages. I’m starting to think this pregnancy agrees with me.”

“Humour me, just this once,” he says, as the lights go off. “I’ll get us out of this.” 

“Of course you will,” Clara mumbles, yawning. 

Her utter faith in him is terrifying. 

The Doctor lays awake through the night, listening to Clara’s breath, alert for any sound that might be a guard or another prisoner straying in their direction. But he didn’t need to worry. Everyone seems too exhausted to contemplate bothering them. Clara relaxes beside him, and as he watches her sleep he has never seen anyone look so beautiful. Yet fragile. Eminently breakable, and he can't forget it, no matter how many times she demands he does. She would probably berate him for thinking like this, and call him overprotective, but he can’t help the feeling. He has to take care of her and the baby. This is his fault. He hates that he’s carelessly put them at risk, and wants to get them as far away as possible. But of course he can’t, not until he’s undone the injustice that’s going on here. They both know it. That’s the central paradox. He can’t change who he is, and what he does, and he won’t give her up, either. He’s going to have to get used to living with the fear of losing her.  

As the dawn breaks, a plan forms in his mind. Things on Hellias Six are about to change.  


	15. Mercy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clara, the Doctor and Journey fight to escape from a prison camp.

Beside the Doctor, Clara stirred. She'd snuggled close to him in the hours of darkness, and as dawn crept through the hut she opened her eyes. Her face was lit by a shaft of gold light pouring through a small oblong window high on the hut’s wall. Laying in his arms she seemed a delicate, ethereal thing, yet for a moment her cheekbones shone bronze and her eyes were flecked with gold. A shudder ran down his spine. What labyrinthine, paradoxical path had brought him from the monastery at St John’s to a prison camp on Hellias, laying beside this woman with his baby in her belly? It seemed impossible, yet here they were. The die had been cast the moment he’d sat under her window. He'd been falling ever since. 

She smiled, not a flicker of uncertainty crossing her face. “Morning,” she whispered. “Did you sleep?”

He felt oddly self-conscious to be caught watching, as if she could see into his soul, so he shrugged nonchalantly. “I napped. We've got work to do today, and I don't just mean shifting stones. Do you feel ok?”

“I feel good.” She frowned slightly as she spoke. “I've no business feeling this good.” 

The Doctor’s face twitched. “I’d like to get back to the TARDIS and run a few ch—"

“Oh no you don't. No more thinking about checks or tests until every last one of these people are free.”

“Clara…”

She kissed him quickly, forcing him into silence. “Once that's done, I promise I'll let you prod and poke me to your heart's content.” She wagged her eyebrows with a devilish look in her eye. Somehow  _ tests _ had never sounded so appealing. He could see she wouldn't budge, and if he was honest he didn't want her to. That brave, stubborn streak was why he loved her.

“Alright,” he whispered, pulling her close as other prisoners rose from their bunks. “Here's the plan…” 

#

As she dressed, Clara caught a glimpse of a rough blade in Kiry’s hand just before it disappeared inside her boot. Kiry’s eyes were hard as they met Clara’s.

“How’d you get hold of that?” Clara whispered as she pulled on her own boots.

“Made it. From metal sheared off one of the old trucks.”

“It must have taken you forever.”

“It's not much of a blade. But it will get me out of a tight spot.” Her eyes were full of distrust. And something else Clara recognised. Kiry might know everyone in the camp, but she seemed deeply alone. Sometimes the Doctor wore the same look. 

“I think you've been in a few tight spots,” Clara said softly. “Do you have anyone? To go back to, I mean, when we get out of here.”

“ _ When _ ? You're confident.”

“I've been in bad situations before.”

Kiry snorted. “Me too. When I get out of a bad one, it’s usually into something worse.”

“Out of the frying pan into the fire?” 

Kiry looked at her quizzically.

“Oh, it's an Earth saying.”

“Earth? Thought that was stories human colonists tell their kids.” Kiry walked through the sparse hut, nodding silently to those she passed. 

“Kiry,” Clara said, grabbing her arm, “We have a plan. But you need to trust us.”

Kiry narrowed her eyes. “I'm listening.”  

#

Journey looked across at Jamal. “Kiry said you know more about ships than anyone else here.” 

He snorted. He wasn't much taller than Journey, and probably a few years younger. The men of Hellias didn't seem to need to shave, their smooth, green chins sporting not a hint of facial hair, despite weeks or months in this camp. That was fine by Journey. It made him look young and innocent, somehow. With luck, easier to persuade. 

“If your friends have some madass plan about flying out of here, they’re crazy. I worked in the shipyards at Fularch Reach. I'm not a pilot.” He started to walk away.

Journey grabbed his arm, tight. “Maybe you’re not, but I am. Tell me everything you know about the ships that dock here.” 

Jamal winced, looking down at her hand. His arm felt pitifully thin under her grip, like a child’s, but his eyes seemed older. Ashamed, she let him go. “If you don't mind,” she added softly. 

He didn't meet her eye as they shoved the trolley back up towards the mine, but he started talking. 

#

By nightfall, everyone in the camp knew the plan and their part in it. There was a palpable difference in the air as they ate that evening. Away from the eyes of the guards, people talked in hushed whispers, their eyes more alive than a few hours before. The Doctor had seen this sort of change many times. He even knew the name of the powerful drug he'd injected into the lifeblood of the camp: Hope. 

“Everyone is ready to do their bit,” Kiry said quietly to Clara and the Doctor. “Whether or not they are  _ capable _ of doing their bit is another matter.” She sighed. “What I wouldn't give to have three of my old resistance cell at my side.” 

“They'll be fine,” the Doctor said. “You don’t have to be fully paid up members of the militia to fight for freedom.” 

“No, but it helps,” Kiry said dryly as he moved away. Soon he was deep in conversation with Journey and Jamal, who had been inseparable for most of the day.  

Kiry turned to look Clara. “You'll have to watch Brial. He's jumpy as hell.” Brial was the most recent Hellanite to arrive at the camp, brought in only a few days before the Doctor and Clara. He was a stocky, angry man, always simmering at the edge of boiling over. 

“It will be ok.” Clara tried to sound reassuring, but this plan had more moving parts than the Doctor’s fob watch. Kiry had every right to be concerned. The young woman was staring hard at Clara. 

“What?”

“What's the deal with you three anyway? Where are you even from?”  

“It's a long story.” 

“Figures. You and him, though. You're together, right? You shared a bunk.” 

Clara raised an eyebrow at Kiry’s blunt question. “If you're going to tell me he's too old for me, don't bother.” 

Kiry smiled softly, her eyes seeming far away. “Actually, I was going to say hold onto to him for all you're worth.”

“Did you lose someone, Kiry?” Clara asked, the lonely look in Kiry’s eyes breaking her heart a little.

“Not someone. Everyone,” Kiry said. “Oh, not all at once. Mother first, when I was too young to remember. My brothers. Father. Then my resistance cell became my family.” She swallowed, and turned her head, as if the memory was bitter. “Now they're all gone too.”

Clara grabbed her hand. “Don't give up on people, Kiry.”

Kiry’s face switched to neutral. “I like things just fine the way they are.”     

#

As they settled for a second night, Clara lay by the Doctor’s side again, wide awake. “I'm really not tired. I should be, after a days work like that. Even Journey says she’s exhausted.” The adrenaline alone should have floored her, but it didn’t.

The Doctor let his palm rest over her belly. “I think that means junior has found their feet. We're past the rejection phase and the pregnancy is established. Maybe the little nipper is giving Mama a boost.”

“Is that normal?”

“A human-Time Lord hybrid is  _ light years _ from normal.”

“That's slightly disturbing.”

“Second thoughts?”

“No! Definitely not. Although I'd feel better if I knew what to expect.”

“That's the brilliant thing, Clara. There's no rule book for this. We're in completely uncharted territory.” His grin lit up the darkness of the gloomy cabin, and her heart skipped. It was really going to happen. She was going to be a mother.  _ They _ were going to be parents. One day soon she'd be looking into a brand new pair of eyes. The Doctor’s long fingers covered the tiny swell of her belly, warming her. This would be the biggest adventure of them all.    

#

“Not yet,” Clara whispered. The trucks were in position at the bottom of the hill. One good shove backwards and the truck Clara and Brial were pushing upwards would career down the track, smash into the trucks clustered at the bottom, and send a screaming tangle of metal towards the closest pylon. It would never break the security perimeter of course, but that wasn't the plan. It just had to look like they were trying. 

Brial was twitchy, his hands clutched tight on the truck’s wall. 

“Wait for the signal,” Clara reminded him. 

Brial nodded grimly. 

#

Journey stood at Jamal’s side, watching for the first glimpse of the ore ship in the grey skies. 

“Don't stare,” Jamal hissed. “Keep working.” 

Journey grabbed another rock and placed it on the conveyor belt running into the processing plant. Once she caught sight of the ship’s design, she should be able to make a guess on whether she'd be able to fly it. Jamal had said most of the ships in the sector were made to human specs, but even so the odds were against her flying this one out successfully. She wouldn't know for sure until she saw inside the cockpit. She’d need to grab a weapon in the planned chaos, something to ensure the pilot would cooperate if she couldn't fly the thing herself.

#

The Doctor and Kiry spoke in low voices as they worked, piling rocks from the mine onto the moving belt.  

“Are you sure you can get through there?” The gap where the conveyor disappeared into the complex seemed impossible tight. The chances of cramming his lanky frame through the hole this lifetime were virtually nil. 

“Sure I can. I've gotten through smaller. It’ll only take me a couple of minutes to open the door once I've got rid of the guards.”

The Doctor grabbed Kiry’s arm. “Look, we’re not here to murder every Saranite in sight. You said it yourself, most of them are little better than slaves.”

“All right. But if it's us or them, then I chose Hellias every time.” 

There was fire in her eyes as she yanked her arm free. What dark forces forged this young woman into a resistance fighter? He knew the answer. War bent everyone out of shape in the end.

#

Clara glanced around the yard. Journey and Jamal were in place. The Doctor and Kiry were working at the conveyor. Brial was at her side, ready to shove the truck down the track towards the one Journey and Jamal were loading. An odd feeling overtook Clara, as if time paused, enabling her to see each part of the plan laid out with perfect clarity. Calmness pooled in her belly. She smiled. Not long now and they would have this whole thing sorted out.

Brial remained taut, often scowling at the sky as he walked around the truck, barely aware of the guards around him. Clara realised the white skinned Saranite guard would bump his shoulder before it happened. The guard spat a few guttural words Clara couldn't hear after the brief contact. Brial’s fists clenched. The guard swept around, and then shoved him to the floor. Clara moved to intervene, to prevent this whole plan disintegrating before her eyes. It was too soon. The ore ship was nowhere in sight, and if things kicked off now… She ran towards Brial, but a young man, no more than a teenager, reached him first. The guard sneered and kicked the boy in the stomach, not brutally hard, but enough to make the lad gasp. Brial leapt to his feet, fist raised. Clara wanted to scream at him to let it go, that it was too soon, that the ship wasn't even in sight yet. But as she drew breath, Brial launched himself at the guard.

In that instant, the plan unraveled. Chaos erupted. People shouted in alarm. 

“Now!” Jamal yelled, looking at the commotion down the track. 

“No!” Journey shook her head, but their truck was already moving. “The ship isn't here!” she yelled, but the rumble of the truck over the rails drowned out her voice. The trucks smashed into one another, sending one high into the air and others careering towards the pylon, even without the truck that Clara and Brial should have sent crashing their way.

In seconds, four guards burst from the mine, and joined three already running towards the fence line, all firing wildly at the prisoners scattering around the complex. Clara swore under her breath and ducked behind her truck. The power field around the perimeter sparked, plumes of smoke rose from the nearest pylon, but the field held. 

#

“The idiots! Can’t they stick to the plan?” Kiry yelled at the Doctor. “The commandant will divert the ship!” 

The Doctor grabbed her arm. “They're not soldiers. They're scared. We can adapt. Where will he send the message from?” 

“The operation control room. Beside his office.” 

“Alright. Go. Get the doors open.” 

Kiry leaped onto the conveyor, and in seconds was through the gap in the plant wall and out of sight. 

#

One of the Saranite guards broke away from the others and showed enough initiative to search behind the twisted carriages. Clara felt like the still heart of a tornado, seeing everything around her with perfect clarity. Another guard, closer to her, drew its weapon, and in that moment Clara lunged, sliding the blaster from the holster before the guard even got their hand to the hilt. Clara flipped the barrel and struck the guard sharply on its head. The creature crumpled to the floor. Clara paused for a moment, startled by the speed of her own reactions. Heart racing, she took in the compound at a glance. 

Journey and Jamal were struggling with a single guard. The Saranite shoved Jamal backwards, while Journey launched herself at its back.

Kiry must have disappeared into the complex. The Doctor had taken cover from the blaster fire behind storage barrels by the door Kiry was due to open. An orange plume zipped by his head, scorching the metal covering him, pinning him down far away from the door. He'd have to run through the firefight to get inside. The guard loosed another volley, destroying the Doctor’s cover. This was all wrong! Fury growing in her belly, Clara fired a blast at the guard taking potshots at her man. The guard crumpled. Through the smoke she could just make out the Doctor’s startled look. 

From behind her, Journey cried out. The Saranite had slammed her against a wall. Jamal was on the floor. 

Clara’s heart thundered, her fingers tight around the stolen blaster. Who was she supposed to protect? The man she loved, or her friend? She bit her lip until she tasted blood. A second passed. Her brain worked furiously, examining everything. The Doctor had cover. Kiry would get that door open, but Journey was against the wall, pinned by the Saranite. It grabbed her throat.

With one last shot at the Saranites threatening the Doctor, Clara took a deep breath and sprinted towards Journey. Jamal was thumping the huge guard’s back, trying to help, but obscuring Clara’s shot. 

The Saranite swung with one vicious arm, flinging Jamal to the ground. That gave Clara the line of sight she needed. She took the shot.

The guard fell, and somehow Clara moved fast enough to catch Journey as she crumpled, wheezing, holding her throat, eyes streaming.   

“Come on!” Clara dragged Journey and yelled at Jamal. He scrambled to his feet, and they flung themselves behind an oil storage silo. 

# 

Kiry opened the door. The Doctor peered into darkness. The acrid smell of ore processing hit his nose. 

Kiry had pulled the scarf she wore around her neck up over her nose and mouth.  “Come on,” she hissed.

With a last glance at Clara, the Doctor followed the Hellian woman inside the complex. His Clara, teacher, with a gun in her hand, and it would seem she was either lucky or a crack shot. He didn't know whether to be horrified or a tiny bit excited. 

He plunged on into darkness, where the deafening rattle of machinery was a blessing hiding their movements, while he put those disturbing thoughts about Clara to the back of his mind.  

“We have to block outgoing messages before the commandant warns the ship not to land,” Kiry said. 

They approached Commandant Galltep’s office. The door was open. 

“He's already gone,” Kiry spat. 

The Doctor rushed into the room. If he could find his sonic glasses then the task he had in mind would be a whole lot easier. 

“I'm going to the control room,” Kiry said.

The Doctor started yanking open drawers, but then spotted a box on top of a filing cabinet. Inside was a chilling collection of items. Rings. Necklaces. Small painted mandalas that looked like religious icons. Wallet after wallet with identification cards, photographs, a sheaf of dried wheat or a flower. Things that could have little value but sentimental, taken from their owners just the same.  _ And _ his sonic glasses.

“Aha!” he slipped the glasses on like they were old friends. He paused. Kiry was dealing with the ship. He had time. He stuffed as many of the personal artifacts as he could from the boxes into his improbably deep pockets, and hurried from the room. 

#

Commandant Galltep stood in front of Kiry. “You Hellianites. I should have known.” His voice sounded almost disappointed. He was much cleaner than the regular guards, his hair pulled into a neat ponytail, and his beard trimmed. 

“That we'd fight back every chance we got? Yes, you should. Then you and your Hek’Ten  puppet masters should get the hell off my planet.”

Galltep smiled. “You’ve been saying that for years. Yet here we are. If you Hellianites just stopped your insurgency and tried a little cooperation—” 

“Cooperation?” Kiry spat. “Why should we cooperate?”

“Because it would be easier for you. No Saranite goes hungry. We do not fear the Hek’Ten. We revere them.”

“It's easy for you, with your genetically engineered privilege. The rest of your race are little better than slaves! Don't you care about your people?”

“Of course I do. We all have better lives through the benevolence of the Hek’Ten. You Hellianites would too if you stopped acting like spoiled children and accepted the Hek’Ten.”

“Hellias will never—"

“Then you will die, like all the others. It doesn't have to be this way.” Galltep’s voice was mild, as if the words were of little consequence to him. It enraged Kiry further, but she fought to keep her cool. So many had died in the last five years of the occupation, as people got hungrier and more desperate. As generations grew up who had only known oppression, the thirst for freedom grew stronger. 

“Step away from the transmitter,” Kiry demanded. 

Galltep smiled, supremely confident, assured that a half-starved young woman was no threat to him. “Or?”

Kiry didn't move.

“I think a better question is how is a pretty little thing like you is going to persuade me not to have you executed in the morning?” His fingers played over the console, opening a channel to the incoming ship.

Kiry didn't speak for a long time. Then she sighed. “I suppose you're right, Commandant. I could be more cooperative." She lowered her eyes and took a step towards Galltep. 

The comms unit crackled to life. “This is the  _ Gach’Rhol,  _ standing by for clearance to dock _.” _

Kiry took another step closer. Galltep let his leering gaze wander up over her body, and grinned before turning to respond to the  _ Gach’Rhol. _

He never completed the action. Kiry slid her hand into her boot. Felt cold steel. Sliced up, plunged the blade’s tip between a chink of Galltep’s body armour. His eyes widened. Before he could reach his weapon, the blaster was in Kiry’s hand. She yanked the blade out in one smooth movement. As Galltep fell, slightly surprised, to the floor, the Doctor burst into the room.

He stared at the commandant, laying in a pool of his own blood on the floor. “Was that necessary?”

“Yes,” Kiry snapped, ready to defend her actions.

The Doctor nodded. “All right.” To her surprise, he didn't question her. 

An impatient tone from the comms link broke the silence. “This is the  _ Gach’Rhol  _ waiting for clearance to land. What's your status, Camp 309?” 

The Doctor hit the comms panel. “We've had a power fluctuation in the phase inverter grid,  _ Gach’Rhol _ , but it's under control now. You’re cleared to land.” 

“Acknowledged.”

Kiry glanced at the Doctor. “No lecture?”

“I believe you. Anyway, what’s done is done. What’s  _ necessary _ is between you and your conscience.” 

Kiry grunted, and shoved the commandant’s blaster into her waistband. Somehow, she’d have preferred the lecture.  

#

“Are you all right?” Clara asked Journey. The bulky ore ship had appeared in the distance moments before, and was roaring closer every moment.  

Journey nodded, but her voice was raspy. “I'm good. Is the door open?”

Between them, she and Jamal helped Journey to her feet. “It's open,” he said. “Well done, Kiry.” 

Clara thrust the blaster into Journey’s hand. “Take this.”

“No. You need to protect yourself.”

“Don't worry about me. I'll get another. You focus on securing that ship.” 

Journey nodded. “All right. Take care.”

“You too.”

With that, Journey and Jamal ran towards the complex door. Clara watched them go, and then turned back to the chaos in the yard. Somehow she had to get this lot ready for the next part of the plan.   

#

Journey and Jamal made it to the complex door by weaving and sprinting through blaster fire. Overhead, the ore ship roared closer. As they flung themselves inside, Jamal paused by a Saranite guard, groaning and shaking his head on the floor. After a swift kick to the head, the guard was down again. 

“Which way?” Journey asked. 

“Kiry said follow the conveyor through the processing plant.”

The plant itself was dimly light. Journey supposed there was little need for light here as the plant was almost fully automated. 

The conveyor belt rose sharply. “We need to find a way up and through. The ship will be docking any minute.” Journey could only hope no one on the ship noticed the chaos in the yard. 

They crouched low as they approached. Two Hek’Ten  were overseeing the transfer of the refined ore up the ramp and into the ship’s hold. They were tall and wiry, with long arms and serene, dark faces.  

“Recognise the class of ship?” Jamal whispered to Journey. 

She shook her head. 

Jamal went on, “I don't know about flying those things, but I do know the ramp controls are just inside the cargo bay. If we can sneak aboard we can close off the ramp. That just leaves the pilot to deal with.”

“Ok. We need to get inside.” Journey studied their movements a minute longer. They lifted boxes from the conveyor, then used a low loader to manually push three at a time up the ramp. That left only a few seconds when both were off the ship. 

They needed a distraction. “What's in the crates they off-loaded?”

“Supplies. Food. Medical equipment if we're lucky.” 

Journey found a spot out of sight behind the crates, and began prising the back off one of them. Jamal had been right, the crate had tins of food and packages of low grade medical items. While the Hek’Ten were out of sight aboard the ship, Journey put the blaster on its lowest setting and aimed a brief burst inside the open crate. It still made more noise than she’d like, but the contents of the crate began to burn. She and Jamal crawled under the ship. 

The Hek’Ten returned moments later, and paused halfway down the ramp, sniffing the air. They spoke in low voices, and then strode towards the crates. As they did, Journey and Jamal slid up the ramp and onto the ship.

“Get the ramp. I'll deal with the pilot," Journey whispered, her heart thundering. Raised voices came from the deck below. 

As she headed deeper inside the ship, Journey caught a satisfying waft of acrid smoke from the deck, just before she heard the ramp begin to power up. 

“Good work, Jamal,” she whispered. Journey clutched the stolen blaster tight and hurried towards the cockpit.

#

Alarm klaxons blared through the complex. “Which way to the generators?” the Doctor asked Kiry.

She frowned. “This way, I think.” She headed towards door, then cursed when she found it locked. She drew the blaster.

The Doctor stayed her hand. “Allow me,” he said with a roguish grin, aiming his sonic sunglasses at the locking mechanism. 

Kiry scowled and then shrugged as the door swung open. 

They made their way through the dim light, down a series of concrete stairs, into a basement. 

“There,” Kiry said, pointing at a large generator. “Can you work your magic on that too?” 

“Yes, but wait.” The Doctor made for a different panel, and started to run scans of the mineral deposits. He frowned deeply. Then his face broke into a grin. “This borocetrazine. Is it worth anything to your people?”

“We never even knew it was there. It's brought us 40 years of misery.”

“What would you say if I told you I could render every gram of borocetrazine in a ten mile radius inert?”

Kiry thought for a moment. “What would that do to the people in the area? And the land?”

“It wouldn't affect the people at all. As for the land, if they were surface deposits it would make the land unfarmable. For deep veins, then I don't see that it would affect the surface at all.”

“In that case, I'd say do it.”

The Doctor nodded. “I can't do it from here. But I could send a modulated ENP wave from a low orbit in a ship. That would do it.” 

Kiry grinned. “I like the way you think. Could you teach me how to do it, too?”

“Perhaps.”

The Doctor turned his attention to the generators. He had to shut those down so Journey and Jamal could bring the ship inside the compound and evacuate the camp, otherwise the prisoners would be easy for the Saranite guards to pick off if they fled across the open ground beyond the perimeter fence.

The klaxon continued, and raised voices sounded from above. “Watch the door,” the Doctor told Kiry. “This might take a few minutes.” 

Kiry turned her weapon to the door. 

He grabbed her arm. “But don't go shooting first—"

Kiry yanked her arm free. “You do your job, Doctor, and I'll do mine.”

The Doctor sighed and nodded. He got to work.

#

Journey moved stealthily along the short corridor that lead to the  _ Gach’Rhol’s  _ cockpit. She heard a door open ahead, and ran the last few steps. When a bemused Hek’Ten  opened the cabin door, the first thing the unfortunate pilot saw was a blaster aimed at her head. 

Journey grinned. “Going somewhere?”

The pilot stared at the gun, then at Journey. “Apparently not.”

“Wrong. You're going right back in there.” Journey shoved the pilot backwards. 

“I don't take orders from humans,” she snarled, stumbling back into her pilot's chair. “And I'd like to see you fly this thing without me.”

Journey surveyed the instrument panel. It had enough similarities to the Aristotle's short range fighters that she might just get the engine powered up.

Journey leaned closer to the pilot, brushing the blaster close to her ear as she leaned over and started what she hoped was the ignition sequence. The ship hummed to life.

“I've taken out three Dalek saucers in something not much bigger. Now, I'm pretty confident I can get this ship in the air. I might even manage a fairly smooth vertical lift. But fine maneuvers in an unfamiliar ship? Could get messy.” Journey paused, and placed a hand on the pilot’s shoulder. “My friends need me down there. One of us is going to fly this thing. Do as I ask, and we both might walk away in one piece.”  

The pilot took a long look at Journey before she answered. “Very well. Where do you wish to go?”

#

Clara surveyed the prisoners clustered at the edge of the open ground, crouched behind oil silos, ready to board the ship once the Doctor got the force field down. Was that everyone? She looked around the yard. Two stragglers, a thin man and a young boy, were hiding in the mouth of the mine shaft. A lumbering Saranite, approaching to their left, drew its weapon.   

Clara swore under her breath. _All of us._ That was the deal she’d made with herself. _No one left_ _behind_. She took a breath, and ran full tilt at the Saranite before she could talk herself out of it. Still running, she leapt and knocked the guard’s elbow, sending the gun spinning through the air. It arced upwards. She saw exactly where it would land, adjusted her position to put herself in precisely the right spot, hand open. The gun fell into her grip. 

The Saranite turned to look at her. Its eyes were cloudy, its face a mixture of confusion and something else. Fear? 

Clara put herself in front of the man and boy in the mine, her feet wide, gun raised.

The Saranite looked around, uncertain what to do. Their eyes met. There was no hate there, barely even a flicker of intelligence. The Doctor had told her that a genetically enhanced leaders would be calling the shots here, and Clara could see exactly what he meant. The guards might be brutally large, but they had little will of their own.

“Turn around,” Clara said to the Saranite in a low, clear voice. “Leave us alone, and we won't hurt you.”

The Saranite put its head to one side. 

Clara's heart thundered. “Don't make me use this. Go back to your friends.” She waved to the other side of the compound. 

For the longest time, their eyes locked. The boy behind Clara sobbed.  _ Be brave, Oswald _ .  _ You can do this.  _

With a whimpering growl, the Saranite lowered its eyes and lumbered away.

Clara let out a long breath, and turned to the man behind her, trying not to let them see how her hands were shaking. “Come on, let's get you to the others.” 

They flew across the yard, and in seconds the man and boy were huddled with the other prisoners. 

As she caught her breath, Clara eyed the all too stationary ship at the back of the ore processing complex, behind the very much operational fence caging the camp on all sides and above. She sat down, back against a crate, and closed her eyes.

Brial must have crawled to her side. “Your mercy may have been a mistake,” he said. 

Clara opened her eyes. “A wise friend once told me mercy is never a mistake.” 

Another Saranite was belting across the yard, dodging past crates, trying to get a clear shot at the huddled group of prisoners. Laser blasts ripped over head. Screams filled the air. 

Clara leapt to her feet. “Stop!” she yelled at the top of her voice. 

The Saranite blundered on, firing into the group of frightened people. 

“Stop!” she yelled again, as she raised her arm. An oil drum exploded. People scattered. The Saranite had a clear shot at the group. 

Mercy was all very well, but she had people to protect. Clara aimed at the dodging guard, and fired in one smooth motion. The Saranite fell. 

Brial looked at her, a little awestruck. “Remind me not to pick a fight with you.” 

Clara stared down at the weapon. Just when did she become such a crack shot? Her hand-eye coordination got sharper every moment, not to mention her reaction times speeding up. It didn't make sense. Still, this was no time to look a gift hybrid in the mouth, so she just shrugged, and casually tossed a stone at the fence line. It crackled blue. Still active. 

“Where are they?” Being the best shot in the world wouldn't help them hold out forever.

#

“Doctor, hurry!” Kiry called from the doorway, as shots echoed down from above.

“Almost there!” The Doctor flipped the final switch to disengage the power to the field generators. The whole system whined, and then fell silent. 

A blaster shot rang out, closer this time. 

“We have to go!” Kiry hauled the Doctor away. “I just hope Jamal and your friend have got that ship.” 

“They'll have it. We need to get back to the yard.” The Doctor set out with long strides, and Kiry ran to keep up. 

“Can you really neutralise the borocetrazine deposits?”

“We’ll see. We have to get everyone out of here safely first.”

The Doctor and Kiry hurried back to the yard, peering out of the door before ducking back in when a volley of laser blasts whizzed past their heads. 

Kiry fired three shots, and ran for the cover of the nearest silo, and the Doctor followed. 

The fence was down, for the first time since he arrived here he could see the hill beyond without a haze of interference. 

He could hear Clara talking urgently to the people hiding there. “Wait! If you run now, the guards will have a clear shot at you before you reach the brow of the hill. My friend will get that ship here.”

The Doctor could see the uncertainty on people's faces as they looked at freedom. More blaster fire whizzed by, cracking against silos, acrid smoke rising. People began to cough and murmur. 

Kiry added her voice. “Clara's right. If you break cover now, you're as good as dead. Jamal will get the ship.” She turned and said more quietly to Brial, “Then we have something to fight back with.”

The Doctor saw Clara before she saw him. Her hair was full of dust, her clothes looked like she'd been rolling around in the dirt, and she gripped a blaster tight in her small hand. She turned her head, and just like before when she lay next to him in the morning light, it seemed her skin glowed with gold dust. Her face broke into a grin at the sight of him. Something washed over him, a feeling so strong he didn't quite know what to do with it, making his pulse fly. His feet wouldn't move.  

She stuck the gun in her belt and embraced him, almost knocking his breath out. “Are you okay? You look like you've seen a ghost.”  

“Not a ghost,” he said, burying his face in her neck. “Just the opposite.” 

She looked at him quizzically. “Okay, whatever that means. We have to get these people out of here.”

At that moment, the ship rose from its docking bay at the back of the processing plant flew over the pylons, and came to land in the yard.

The ramp began to descend. More blaster fire exploded from behind the ship. 

“Come on!” Clara yelled at the waiting prisoners, who looked dubiously at the open ground they'd have to cover to reach the safety of the ship.

Kiry found a spot behind a silo. “I'll cover you. Go!” She opened fire on the Saranite positions. 

The first Hellians broke cover and ran, and soon they were streaming up the ramp. 

Two Saranites appeared, white hair flowing as they ran directly towards Kiry.

“Why are they doing that?” Clara said, sickened, as both fell to Kiry’s blasts. 

“I don't think they have a choice,” the Doctor whispered. It appalled him to see the Saranites die this way. “Pointless slaughter,” he said bitterly. “The Hek’Ten have a lot to answer for.” He couldn't watch. 

“Come on!” Clara yelled at the stragglers. 

Another Saranite appeared on Kiry’s left flank, weapon drawn, right in her blind spot, its long lumbering strides closing in fast. Hand to hand, she wouldn't stand a chance and the Doctor knew it. He turned to Clara, his hearts twisting in knots. 

Clara aimed low at the Saranite’s leg. It was a very long shot, and the Saranite was moving. She'd never make it, but if she didn't Kiry wouldn't stand a chance in a close quarters fight. Clara’s face looked serene, almost as if she  _ felt _ the connection between her weapon and target. She could take the guard down without killing. He knew it in his bones. 

Clara fired. The Saranite stumbled, clutching its leg.

“Now, Kiry, run!” Clara yelled.

Clara was glorious in his eyes right then.  _ Mercy. Always mercy. _

#

The moment Journey had felt the ship bump down, she had understood completely why the Saranites were thrusting themselves into the breach. From the cockpit she saw another Hek’Ten had arrived, and was directing the unfortunate creatures at gunpoint. They had a big weapon too, a huge cannon on set on a tripod, which two Saranites were assembling and aiming in their direction. In seconds it would be ready to fire.

“That’s everyone,” Jamal said as he entered the cockpit. 

“We have to go!” Journey yelled at the pilot. “Your friends obviously think you're expendable.”

The pilot looked up at Journey, stubborn resolution on her face. “Maybe. Or maybe they'll disable this ship and hang the lot of you.” She removed her hands from the controls and folded her arms. 

Journey narrowed her eyes. She’d been watching closely while the pilot flew them here, and even after a short distance she was much better informed about the controls on this ship. Besides, during virtual flight training, she had the control configurations of 407 different specs of space and land craft jacked into her brain. She yanked the pilot from the seat. 

“Watch her,” she said to Jamal, handing him her weapon, before sitting down at the instrument panel. “Alright. Let’s see what stuck.” She eased the ship upwards.

A crack resounded through the hull, sending the ship reeling to the left, as the Doctor staggered into the cockpit.

“Do we have weapons?” Jamal shoved the gun at the Hek’Ten’s tranquil face, but she didn’t flinch. 

Journey scanned the controls. Another blast jolted the ship, and in the back, people screamed. The cannon blasted again, painting the sky with red lasers all around. 

The Doctor examined the instrument panel, gripping the edge tight to hold his balance. Then he grinned and flicked a switch just above a schematic of the  _ Gach’Rhol. _ “What we need is shields.” A blue line surrounded the small picture of the ship. 

Journey gasped in relief. The laser blasts continued to bleed into the sky, but the  _ Gach’Rhol _ rose through them like a hawk on thermals, and sped away.

  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi folks! Do let me know what you think of this chapter, as I'm in two minds where to go next with this story. Feedback will help me make up my mind and always makes my day. :)


	16. I Never Refuse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor plans to help Kiry free her planet from aggression, but finds time to get cosy with Clara too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter gets a bit sexy, but in my opinion still holds it's T rating. You have been warned, though.

After clearing the Hek’Ten gun positions, Journey put the ship down at the very edge of a forested area. Kiry lost no time rounding up enough help from the former inmates to disguise the ship, and after an hour it was expertly hidden with branches and leaves. 

“Can you really do what you said? Neutralise the borocetrazine in that mine?” Kiry asked as she placed a final branch against the gunmetal grey of the Hek’ten ship. 

“Yes, but we need to fly fairly low over the mine to do it. The Hek’Ten will undoubtedly call in reinforcements.”

“Not if they’re under attack somewhere else.” 

The Doctor frowned. “Why would they be under attack somewhere else?” 

Kiry raised an eyebrow, her face almost giving way to a smile. “Give me an hour in the village and I'll find a resistance cell.”

“I'll come with you,” Clara offered.

“Better if I'm alone. Keep a close eye on that Hek’Ten pilot.” Kiry strode down a winding lane and away toward the village.

“Don't worry, we will,” Clara called. Jamal had tied the pilot up and been none too gentle about it. He’d only conceded to let her use the bathroom under Clara’s withering stare. She had no intention of letting any harm come to a prisoner under her watch.

#

Journey took the opportunity to familiarise first herself with the vessel’s controls, imagining the thrust and running through the landing procedures again in her head. She could fly this, and with a little time, she could fly it well. 

Jamal studied the console, fingering the dials and switches. “Think you could teach me how to fly this thing?”

Journey sighed. “Not quickly.”

“Shame. If I could fly… The Hek-ten shipyards are well guarded from the ground, but if we could fly in then it wouldn’t be too difficult to steal more ships.”

“Yeah, that might work once, but they’d soon get wise to it and extend the force fields. You’d need to steal enough ships to make it worthwhile in one hit.”

Jamal wrinkled his nose. “Crazy idea, I suppose.”

A notion took her, and she dashed off to find the Doctor.  “That ship of yours seems to have everything. I mean, I found a forest grove and a epi-gen field generator while I wandered around. Don’t suppose it has a flight simulator?”

“Sorry, no.” He hesitated. “But with the schematics and some gentle persuasion, I’m sure it  _ could _ . What are you thinking?”

“If we had pilots, we could organise one hell of a raid on the Hek-ten shipyard. Jamal told me there are plenty of ships stored there. We could give these people a fighting chance.” Journey’s eyes lit up for a moment, but then her brow fell. “It would take weeks of training, even with flight simulators.”

The Doctor grinned. “You’re forgetting one very important thing, Journey Blue,” he said, his eyes alive with possibilities. “Time machine.” 

#

Kiry returned with a tall woman in her forties, her weatherworn face pulled into a frown.

“Doctor, Clara, this is Verdan. She’s the resistance cell leader in this province.”

Clara shook her hand. The woman’s grip was strong, her hands calloused and hard.

Verdan looked around the ship. “Good work, Kiry. We can use this to move personnel to raid points. It could give us a real advantage. Life knows we need one.”

The Doctor extracted himself from the ship’s fusion-core, his hair wild, eyes sparking with energy. “Of course, you  _ could _ use it to carry a few saboteurs to blow things up. On the other hand, you could use it to win this war.”

Verdan turned her head sharply towards the Doctor. 

He smirked. “Journey and Jamal have come up with a rather spectacular plan.”

#

It took two days to filter the civilians away from the landing site so they could begin the trek to their respective homes. They went in small groups, hours apart so not to draw attention to unusual movements through the countryside. Another day after that, and Verdan had assembled ten resistance fighters she considered most likely to have an aptitude for pilot training. With herself and Kiry, that made twelve.

“Look, I can see the value of this,” one would-be pilot said, shifting from foot to foot in the cargo hold, “but I’m worried about being away from my family and farm.” There was a murmur of agreement from the others.

Kiry stepped forward. “I understand. I would be too. But the beauty of this is we  _ won’t _ be away, not really.”

Clara glanced at Kiry before she spoke. “Look, the Doctor’s ship is like nothing you’ve seen before. We can take off and park somewhere for a few weeks—as  long as it takes—and then come right back here moments after we left. It will be like you were never gone, but you’ll come back with weeks worth of training to fly Hek-ten vessels.”

The man who spoke before scowled. “So you’re saying it will be like we travelled in time?” 

Clara grinned. “Exactly.”

“You expect us to believe that?” came a scornful voice. 

Verdan spoke, her voice low and clear. “Believe it, or don’t. I’m not sure I will until it happens. But I know one thing, if there’s a chance these people can help us, then I’ll do it, for Hellias. The Hek-ten take our food, pollute our lands, and steal our freedom. We’ve been slaves long enough, don’t you think?”

#

Kiry, still wearing the stolen gun, Clara and the Doctor tracked back to the TARDIS through the dead of night. The air was chilled, and Clara pulled her jacket close around her, wishing, for the hundredth time since they arrived, for a hot shower. 

“No stars,” Clara said softly. Ahead, a haze clung to the sky over the distant camp, and the smell of burning hung in the air.

“Pollution from the mining.” The Doctor glanced up as he walked beside her. 

“Our children choke while the Hek-ten strip us bare.” Kiry’s bitterness was palpable, spat like a curse. Clara didn’t know how to respond. There was nothing she could say that would make this better, no words to salve the sorrow and anger consuming Kiry. 

“There she is.” Clara pointed ahead to the dim outline of the blue box. Her heart danced in her chest, out of all proportion to the simple act of returning to their mode of transport. But it felt so much more than that. She reached for the Doctor’s hand in the darkness, felt his presence steady beside her, his hand clasping hers, familiar and warm. His short intake of breath told her he felt it too.  _ Home _ .

“ _ That _ ?” Kiry’s voice was disparaging. “If you’ve lied to me—”

“Trust me. It’s not what it looks like,” Clara whispered. 

Kiry snorted. The Hellian’s home had been violated, their planet ravaged, people little better than slaves, while Clara’s world lay safe beyond the doors of the blue box. A trickle of guilt dissipated her relief at finding the TARDIS. There was nothing to say that would make Kiry feel better. But there was plenty they could  _ do _ . 

#

Kiry stood ridged staring around the console room, as the Doctor strode past her. 

Her hand rested on her weapon. “Is this a trick? Because if you—”  

Clara closed the door behind her, and placed a hand on the Hellian’s shoulder. “It’s no trick,” she said softly. “It’s real. And it really does travel in time, too.”

Kiry glanced in her direction. “And with all this power, all this technology, you could do anything. Sell your services to the highest bidder. Make a fortune. Rule the galaxy. But you decide to help a planet of half starved primitives who can give you nothing in return?”

The Doctor turned to her, his shoulders straight, his face as handsome as Clara had ever seen it. His voice was smooth, and seemed to shimmer through her heart as he spoke. 

“When someone asks for help, I never refuse.” 

Clara blinked rapidly, her throat tight, swallowing the rush of love and pride that surged through her, because even though she was tired, and sore, and dirty, she most certainly  _ wasn’t _ going give in and cry. 

This is what it truly meant to be the Doctor. 

Clara took a soothing breath, and left the Doctor talking to Kiry. “I’ve got time for a shower, right?” 

The Doctor pulled a comical face. “Seriously?” He swirled his finger upwards at the ceiling, grinning expansively, showing off a bit for Kiry’s benefit. “Time machine. You’ve got time to redesign the nursery if you want, and…” He glanced at Kiry and blushed. “Well, do anything you like.” 

Kiry raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. 

Acutely aware of his reddened face, the Doctor watched Clara leave. Somehow, discussing the pregnancy felt like admitting he’d overstepped the boundaries, fallen in love with someone he travelled with. He’d sworn he wouldn’t do that again, and yet here he was, not just a bit in love, but fathering a child with a human who he was —there was no other word for it, besotted with.

Kiry almost smirked. “So, nursery eh? Congratulations.” 

“Hmmm,” he said, unable to meet her eyes. It was also, of course, an acutely public admission he’d had sex with Clara, and that thought turned him redder still. Maybe there was something to be said for looms after all. He rolled his shoulders, flicked a few levers and checked some readings. “We need to build the confidence of your fellow resistance fighters. What do you say we show them this really _ is _ a time machine, so they’ll concentrate on the mission instead of worrying about their families?”

Kiry suppressed a smile at his obvious discomfort and the crude deflection. “All right. How do we do that?”

He grinned. “What would you say to a long bath and a visit to the TARDIS wardrobe? Then we pick up a decent meal for everyone we left behind, whatever supplies you think your people need, and arrive thirty seconds after we left. Would that be convincing?” 

He took Kiry’s slack-jawed stare for agreement, and ushered her towards one of the TARDIS spare bedrooms. He smiled. Good plan, Doctor. It would give him a bit of time with Clara, too.

#

As the Doctor stepped into his own room, the shower was running in the en suite bathroom. For a moment he was tempted to slip into the hot water with Clara, but he hesitated. Were they at the shower-sharing stage of their relationship? They had been best friends for years, were having a child together, but the physical intimacy felt so new, and he had to admit had only happened so far at her express invitation. Besides, they had a guest. He ran his hand through his hair, kicked off his boots, lay on the bed, and sighed. He closed his eyes and made a concerted effort not to recall other nights they had spent together; the hotel bedroom; the subterranean hot baths. Heated moments in this very room. He shuddered at the desire the memories stirred. He started running temporal equations in his head.  

He didn’t open his eyes when the water stopped. A few moments later she padded into the room. The bed shifted as she sat beside him. 

“You look like you need a shower too. You could have gotten in with me.” 

He opened one eye, and then the other. She was draped in a towel, with another wrapped around her hair, and looked clean. Warm. Ridiculously appealing. She smelled of the slightly floral shower gel the TARDIS always provided from nowhere. He was a fool not to have joined her. 

He patted her leg, a little awkwardly. “Oh, you know me, Doctor Idiot. I didn’t know if that was appropriate.”

She laughed softly. “Oh, it’s appropriate. In fact, perhaps you should while there’s still room in the cubicle for both of us. This bump will only get bigger over the next few months…” She took his hand, and placed it over the small swell in her belly. In months to come he would feel their child moving there.

The intimacy of the gesture made his hearts flutter. “I see. So, this is appropriate?” He slipped his fingers past the towel and onto her soft skin of her belly. She was hot to the touch. Delicious.

She leaned across to kiss him. “You’re catching on.” 

He groaned softly as her lips met his. He snaked an arm around her back, tugging her towards him, until her weight rested over him, while worming his hands beneath the dratted towel, over her buttocks and onto her back. 

She made a gentle humming sound as he kissed her, then she said gently, “Why don’t you get yourself cleaned up, hmmm?” She unbuttoned his shirt, giving him a head start for the shower, he supposed, tugging the fabric from his trousers and baring his chest. Her hands came to rest at his belt. 

The beginning of a growl escaped his throat. He didn’t want to wait, not for a shower, not for anything. He leaned up and kissed her again, tasting the mint of her toothpaste, needing to feel her skin under his fingertips right now.  

She laughed, her eyes promising, her lips close to his. “I’ll still be here when you’re done.” She thumbed the bathroom.

With two hands on her hips, he rocked her over until she lay on her back. She gasped, looked up at him in surprise, her brown eyes fixed with his, vivid and alive, making him ache where their bodies touched, her gaze tugging at something he’d thought long lost. In a life such as his, this happened so rarely. Or maybe he’d got so busy protecting himself by solving other people’s problems he’d forgotten his own. Then she blew through his lives like a hurricane. Passionate. Unshakeable, untouched for a while — and that was his own fault— but now here she was in his bed, palm pressed to his bare chest, the calm against his storm. 

“I love you, you know,” he breathed. “Now more than ever. I’ll never stop.” 

He kissed her again, and this time she didn’t ask him to stop. He gently tugged the towel away, until she lay nude beneath him. His eyes travelled over every part of her. 

“Now, am I objectionably dirty, or will you let me make love to you right now?” 

In answer, she kissed him again, this time her breath snatched as the kiss became a desperate, live thing, blotting out rational thought. She fumbled with his shirt to pull it from him. Her hands clasped his shoulders, fingers digging into his back, just enough to hurt him a little and drive him wild.

“No objections,” she whispered.

He left her just long enough to remove his remaining clothes and then swooped back down to take her. 

 

  
  



	17. Freedom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor helps the Helians.

The shower hummed in the adjoining bathroom. From the bed, feeling boneless and sated, Clara listened to the water splash against the tiles. It was almost hypnotic. A warm smile fluttered on her lips. Something had shifted between them tonight, turning intimacy from something she wanted and he gave her to something he needed. Her cheeks flushed with the memory of his skin against hers, his gentle but persistent desire for her. His unforced declaration that he loved her, and that he wouldn't stop loving her, made her head spin when she remembered it now. He hadn't pretended his feelings were driven by duty, or offered words wrapped in an oblique reference to his caring meaning more than her betrayal. It wasn't easy for him to make the shift from not-a-hugger to passionate lover. Yet as he walked back into the room, rubbing his hair with a towel, he seemed entirely comfortable. 

“Are you still awake?”

“Hmm. We should check in on Kiry.” She felt relaxed, sated, happy, but not particularly tired.

She rose and pulled on a pair of soft trousers and a grey t-shirt that swamped her. She felt his eyes on her, even performing that simple task. She dragged a hand through her tangled hair. She had  lain down with it wrapped in a towel, and soon lost that as they made love. His room, with it’s stellar view and satin sheets, didn't seem to contain anything as mundane as a hair brush. 

“You look beautiful,” he said.

“I must look a mess,” she began, laughing. 

He closed the distance between them and placed his hands on her shoulders. His face became suddenly serious. “You'll never look any different to me, Clara Oswald.” 

She almost laughed and made some flippant comment about her soon-to-be growing size, but the half smile wrinkling his eyes held her back. This was another gift, she realised, not to be cast aside lightly. She would grow old and he would not, and he was promising her it didn't matter to him at all. 

She pressed herself up onto her tiptoes, kissed him lightly, and returned his gift. “I love you.” 

When they went to search out their guest, Kiry was fast asleep, curled up in the soft bed in the room the Doctor had shown her to. 

“She looks so peaceful,” Clara whispered. “Probably more than she has in years.” She’d seen Kiry toss and turn at night in the labour camp. This clean young woman bore little resemblance to the ragged fighter she’d gotten to know over the past few days.  

The Doctor followed Clara out as she backed away from the sleeping woman. “She’s spent her whole life under the Hek’Ten. Surprising what a bath and going to bed with a little hope in your heart can do.”

Clara turned her face towards him. “You really think we can do it? End the occupation?”

Almost imperceptibly, the Doctor’s face twitched. “I don’t know. I’m pretty sure we can make this planet less attractive to the Hek’Ten by neutralising the borocetrazine in the mines. We might even alter the balance of power by stealing the resistance a few ships and training pilots. But end the occupation? That’s a political or military decision. It’s a big ask to solve.”

Clara nodded. “I know. Let’s give her time to rest. I could use a little sleep myself.” 

The Doctor looked at her closely. “I’m surprised you’re not more tired. You’ve not slept much the last few days. We’ve been fighting, running, dealing with the people on the ship—”

“Not to mention the rather energetic sex.”

He actually blushed, which she found incredibly endearing. “I am a bit tired,” she admitted.

“You  _ should _ be exhausted.” 

“Doctor. I sense another round of medical scans coming on. Am I right?”

“Just taking a healthy interest in your wellbeing,” he mumbled.

“Fine. But in the morning.”

His fingers were twitchy, in the way they always were when he had a plan he wanted to get started on. “I’ll lay with you awhile. Then I’ll get started on those flight simulators.”

Clara squeezed his hand. “It’s all right. You don’t have to—”

“Clara, I want to. I don’t want you to think I only share a bed with you when, well, you know.”           

Clara smiled. “It's all right. I understand. You don't need to sleep as much as I do.” 

He followed her back to bed anyway, and she lay in his arms until sleep took her.

When she woke, he was gone. By the clock it was only four hours later, but her aches were gone, she felt refreshed and ready to go, so she got up. 

She found the Doctor in the console room, studying schematics, presumably hacked, for a flight simulator from one of the Hek’Ten home world’s training bases. 

“Awake already?” 

“Wasn't very tired. How's this going?”

“Good. I've set up a replication request in the self-organising structural matrix. The TARDIS will select a low-frequency-use area and begin the transformation.” He looked up and lowered his voice to a near rumble that brokered no argument. “So, Clara Oswald. Medical bay.” 

Clara raised her hands in mock surrender. “I'm all yours.”

#

The Doctor scowled at the medical scanner. This just didn't make a shred of sense. “The bio-readings are fine. Your oestrogen levels are elevated but in the normal range. The baby’s hearts are synchronised. Everything biological is as it should be. It's just…”

“Doctor, you're worrying me. What is it?”

Clara sat up on the medical bed, following him with her eyes as he pace the medical bay. He  _ should _ have the answers, but there were some things he just didn't know at the moment— if they were knowable at all. It's not as if there was a manual for a human-Time Lord hybrid pregnancy, anyway. She was, thankfully, in robust health, the scans confirmed that much. Her body seemed to have no difficulties adapting to the alien DNA inside her, and for that he thanked every deity he could think of. Still, he couldn't withstand the heat of her stare much longer, and he certainly couldn't keep this new discovery from her. 

He sighed. “There's a tick in the chronometric readings”

“A what?”

“I only noticed because I ran a deep level scan due to the baby's… unique heritage. It’s just a minor variation in the temporal vectors surrounding your womb.”

She shot him the sort of glare he often found himself subject to when he used language outside her frame of reference.

“What does that even mean?”

Truth was, he didn't exactly know  _ what _ it meant. “Probably nothing.” He paced closer to her. “How do you feel?”

“Like I said, I feel fine. If anything, sharper than usual.”

The Doctor chewed his bottom lip and paced the room until he reached the equipment crowding the work surfaces on the other side of the bay. If he couldn't explain in words she’d understand, then he needed to show her. Keeping his back to her, he picked up a test tube, but discarded it as too dangerous. Then he rummaged in his pockets and found a small yellow bouncy ball. That would do nicely. Without warning, he turned and threw the ball, aiming it a few inches to the left above her shoulder.  

Her hand shot out to meet it. 

She looked at the ball in her hand with surprise. “Why’d you do that?”

“More to the point, how did you catch it?” 

“I saw it coming.” She stared at him, her brow wrinkling with thought. “I've been reacting pretty fast to things lately. Like in the prison camp, disarming that guard. Feeling energised, too.” She narrowed her eyes. “Is it connected?”

“Possibly. Probably.” 

Her face was creased into puzzled concern.

He took her hands in both of his and used his most soothing voice. The one he used to keep people hopeful when he really didn't have a clue if he could save them or not. “I really don't think it's anything to worry about. Seems like the baby is manipulating time.”

“Manipulating time? Like on purpose?” she exclaimed. She looked him full in the eye, and he knew she wasn't fooled, not for a moment.

“You don't have a clue what's happening, do you?” she said with some heat. 

“Of course I do!” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he wanted to slap himself. He couldn't lie. Not to Clara, not about this. His shoulders slumped in wretched defeat, caught between his desire to protect her and his need to be honest with the woman he loved. If he couldn't do that, what hope was there for them to build a life together?

“All right,” he said after a moment. “I don't. It's… unexpected.” 

Then she did the last thing he expected. 

She reached up, touched his face and smiled. “It’s all right. You don't have to know everything.”

That knocked the wind from his sails. He didn't really know how to respond. In the end he blustered and laughed a little. “Not really used to it. And I don't want any nasty surprises.”

“Nor do I. But who's to say this won't be a good surprise? I  _ feel _ good. Fast. If that's the baby's doing, maybe it's a wonderful gift. Perhaps it's protecting me. That extra turn of speed when we were escaping from the camp certainly came in handy.”

All of that was true. Maybe Clara was right. There was certainly little to be gained by worrying. His face must have given away his fears, because Clara pulled him into a soft hug, dragging his long frame down to her level perched on the medical bed.

“It will be okay. You'll see. Nothing bad will happen to me or this baby.”

He held her close. He wanted that to be true, more than anything. They deserved a little happiness, didn’t they? All the times he'd fought for what was right, to give others a chance. Given his all so that someone else could live. He didn't begrudge any of it. Wouldn't change a single moment. But now maybe it was time for the universe to give something back. Clara's confident smile seemed to say she believed that. Perhaps it would be true. But he couldn't shake the feeling that in his life, things could never be quite that simple.

#

It took a few hours, after Kiry awoke, for Clara to help her gather the food and supplies she needed. By the time that was done, the Doctor declared the flight simulators ready for action. 

He grinned, in the way that always sent a thrill through her, erasing the worries from his face. “All right, Kiry,” he said, spinning his time machine through the vortex. “Let's go confuse the hell out of your friends.”  

He pulled the dematerialisation lever. The engines wheezed. Kiry was staring anxiously at the door, as if she still didn't believe they could arrive thirty seconds after they had left. Clara was harbouring a few discrete doubts herself. The Doctor's piloting was hardly renown for its accuracy. 

“Voilà,” the Doctor said with an expansive flourish. The screen showed the startled faces of Verdan, the other members of the group, and Journey grinning through the darkness. 

Kiry motioned towards the door. “May I?”

“Be my guest.” 

Kiry grabbed an arm full of the food containers they'd stocked up on when they made a quick detour to the Arbralian delicatessen, and headed out of the door.

Clara looked at the Doctor’s broad smile. “You like this, don't you?”

“Feeding people who haven't seen a decent meal in weeks, or scaring the pants off them by landing my time machine on their toes?”

“Both.”   

“Simple pleasures,” he said mildly. 

Clara grabbed more containers of food, and followed Kiry out of the doors.

#

The Doctor declared it would take three months to train twelve pilots. Clara was sure they could cut corners and get it done quicker, and Journey agreed, but the Doctor set the pace and wouldn't be persuaded otherwise. He was stubborn as hell sometimes. He parked the TARDIS in the corner of Clara's flat, and there it stayed despite her protestations. 

“I think you're stalling. Waiting until this bump is so big I can hardly move.”

“Would I? I hate staying still as much as you do. But it's necessary if we’re going to give the Helians a fighting chance.” 

“They might have to stay still to spend the time in the flight simulator.  _ We _ don't.” 

The Doctor shrugged. “Can't risk anyone wandering off.”

Clara snorted. “Is that a lie?” 

He just raised an eyebrow.

#

**Three months later.**

Clara tapped her foot impatiently as Journey checked the latest flight simulation results. 

“It's too bad we can't get real flight time. But I think this is as good as we're going to get.” As a group the pilots had all made decent progress, and Kiry turned out to be the best of them all. She’d put in more hours than anyone else. Clara had often found her in the simulator complex late into the night and early mornings, and she didn't have Clara’s excuse that her need for sleep had dwindled to almost nothing. A couple of hours every other night seemed to be enough for Clara lately. 

It was odd, how time expanded when she didn't need so much sleep. She'd consumed book after book, revisiting classics, learning things she never dreamed she could understand. She even found herself thumbing through a pristine TARDIS user manual at one point.

The Doctor had scoffed. “Didn't know I still had that. Thought I threw it in a supernova.”

“Well, it certainly hasn't seen much use.” 

“You'll never understand it,” he’d said over his shoulder before dashing off on some errand. He'd done that a lot, and refused to tell her what he was up to. 

Clara had wrapped her arm possessively around the heavy volume and glared at his departing back. If she was going to raise a child on a time ship, then damn right she would take every opportunity to figure out how things worked. 

Now, Journey stood, drill-instructor-straight in front of her little team of newly minted pilots. “Let's go over the plan one last time.”

She pointed at a holographic image of the Hek’Ten shipyard they planned to raid. 

“I'll drop you in the centre of the yard, here, and provide covering fire. You'll have to take out guards stationed here, and here. There'll be labourers in the yard, too, who’ll hopefully take cover when they realise something’s going down, but it will be up to you to stay sharp and not shoot any of your own people. We want to end up with a minimum of the six ships in the repair area that are waiting to be cycled back into active duty.”

Verdan stepped forward. “Kiry and Jamal will take the closest two vessels to our drop point. Once they’re in the air, they’ll provide active cover to the rest.”

One of the pilots stepped forward. “Two years ago, my brother was taken to that yard. For all I know he could still be there.”

Verdan nodded at three resistance fighters from her cell. “That’s exactly why Hogan, Pel and Zabier will be on the ground, rounding as many of our people as possible into this vessel. We’ll go in at midday, when everyone should be around the foodstations. That should give us the best chance of getting as many people out as possible.” Verdan’s eyes darkened. “I hope we can get people out. But the ships are the priority. They’ll give us the first real chance in decades of pushing back against the Hek’Ten.”

“Once we are clear of the shipyard, we launch phase two. Journey, you’ll clear out the civilians you’ve collected at the coordinates we agreed. Then Jamal, you lead your squad on a sustained bombardment of the Hek’Ten administration center. That should draw the Hek’Ten forces away from the mining areas. Kiry, you’ll provide cover for the Doctor’s low sweep over the mine. Doctor. How long do you need to neutralise the borocetrazine?”

“Four or five minutes to get deep enough.”

“Very well,” said Verdan.

The Doctor squeezed Clara’s hand. “You’ll monitor everything from here on the TARDIS. I’ve set up multiple screens and comm links so you can coordinate both wings of the attack.”

Each Helian pilot had been equipped with a direct personal line to the TARDIS, routed from small broach-style badges to the TARDIS console, as they couldn’t rely on the Hek’Ten system to patch them through. The Doctor had snorted when Clara called them “A bit Star Trek.” 

Verdan placed a hand on Clara’s shoulder. “We can’t thank you enough for this chance.” 

Clara glanced at the Doctor. “Don’t thank us yet,” she said quietly, with the eyes of the men and women of the resistance on her. A sick feeling pulled at her throat, and she rubbed her hand uneasily over her swollen belly. How many of these people would fall before the day ended?

#

**Approaching the Hek’Ten shipyard, Helias.**

Journey flew low over the barren landscape of Dukas Province. She’d named her ship  _ Freedom _ , hoping that’s what would come of this venture. Freedom for the Helians. Maybe for her, too. The shipyard would be in view in moments. She activated the shipwide coms channel. “Two minutes to target. I’m reading no enemy vessels so far.”

In the  _ Freedom’s _ cargo bay, the men and women of the resistance stood ready to disembark. 

The Doctor heard Journey over the coms as he checked his neutralisation device. He’d set the complex machine up in the hold, and he needed a direct line of site to the ground to use it. That meant the doors would have to remain open for at least five minutes in flight. Verdan moved through the crowd towards him, with a wiry woman fighter, even younger than Kiry, at her side. 

“I’ll leave Malika here to watch the hatch when we disembark. We can’t risk the Hek’Ten boarding and interfering with your equipment. Are you sure you can hold on here, with the hatch open?”

“Don’t worry about me. Just make sure your people make it to the ships.”

Verdan nodded. “Clara, can you hear me?” she said into her comms.

“Loud and clear, Verdan. You’re less than thirty seconds from target. Still no ships in the vicinity.”

Journey’s voice came over comms again. “I’m not sure how smooth this will be as we’re coming in hot. Doors open in ten seconds. Brace for landing.”

Verdan grabbed the bulkhead. “Stand by!” she yelled over the roar of the engines. 

The ship dropped sharply. An instant later the hatched powered open. Verdan yelled the command to go, and the ship erupted with the rush of the fighters pouring from the vessel into the shipyard. The Doctor caught a last glance of Kiry as she led the charge out. Verdan brought up the rear, leaving Malika to take a space by the hatch, gun ready.

“No one gets on this ship but Helians, you got that?”

“Yes Ma’am.”

#

Kiry bolted down  _ Freedom's _ hatch. The shipyard was laid out just as the Doctor’s aeriel scans had shown them. She sprinted alongside Jamal towards the two closest ships. He signalled he would take the one on the left, and she just had time to give him the thumbs up before he vanished from sight. Her whole world consisted of running. If she could get a ship, it would change everything for her. The freedom of the skies. A chance to hit back for every moment of Hek’Ten aggression. Every Helian child that starved because the land was pillaged so the Hek’Ten could have their blasted kava. Every father ripped from his family. Her chest tightened at the memory. No time for that now. Things were going to change or she’d die trying. 

Laser fire from behind. Shouting. She got a foot on the ramp and turned. Hek’Ten guards were on the yard, weapons drawn. A blast ricochet over her head. She aimed at guard who was running, pistol drawn, towards Jamal's ship, eyes wide with surprise. There were no Saranites around. The Hek’Ten didn't think Helias could organise something like this, not after all those years ground down by Hek’Ten boots. She should almost feel sorry for the complacent Hek’Ten, shocked at having to do their own dirty work for once. Almost. But not quite. Ice grew in her heart. No space for pity or mercy. She’d long had that frozen out of her, over years of work in windy fields in threadbare clothes, and days when her mother’s hands bled from the servitude, and her eyes hinted at a dark story Kiry didn't want to know, even now. _Yeah, assholes. We’re fighting back._ _And this time we’ll have more than sticks and stones._ She watched the soldier fall. Then she slammed the hatch closed and ran to the cockpit.

It was so like the flight simulators, she blinked in surprise. She should have guessed the Doctor's crazy machine, with its diabolical dimension-twisting shape, had the power to get it right. She slipped into the pilot's chair as if she'd been doing it all her life. The controls were familiar under her touch. Her heart pounded. For a mad second she wanted to abandon the preflight checks and take off, feel the engines roaring and… She took a breath and forced herself to be methodical. Bring the engines on line. Convene the navigational array. Check the sensors. Power weapons. No second chances. She had to do this right. Her hands shook. She took a moment to scan the area of the yard immediately outside her ship. More Hek’Ten were arriving on foot, heading towards the back of the camp. The kitchen area. They would block the prisoners escape, and it wouldn't be long before aeriel reinforcements arrived. Kiry tracked the running soldiers with the ships energy weapons. 

“Oh no you don't,” she muttered. She opened fire. The blast flowered crimson, like petals in a storm. For a moment the flare blinded her. She looked away, but not before she glimpsed bodies. Silent screaming. Slicks of blood. Oceans of it. Torn limbs. Bile rose in her throat.  _ You shouldn't be here. You don't belong here! This wouldn't be happening to you if you just left us be!  _

Her teeth jolted in her jaw. She forced down the urge to vomit. Turns out killing your enemies en masse is a lot less satisfying than her fevered dreams had imagined.   __

#

The Doctor pulled another ragged Helian aboard  _ Freedom _ . “Take cover in the back.” A volley of blaster fire hit the cargo deck walls. Screams. Smoke. More hands. Pel was shouting that’s the last of them and they needed to go now, as more crimson fire blasted through the hold. 

“Shouldn't there be more? Where’s Hogan and the other chap?”

Pel shook her head, just once, then yelled forward. “Journey! Get us out of here!”

The Doctor followed Pel to the cockpit. 

“How many did we get?” Journey asked.

Pel’s face was grim. “Twenty at most.”

“Only twenty? There were over a hundred prisoners in that yard.” 

“The guards blocked us off. No way through.” 

The Doctor tapped his comm link to the TARDIS. “Clara, can you see where the prisoners are?”

“Hold on, Doctor.” On the open channel he heard her speak in rapid fire bursts to other pilots. “Kiry, you have an incoming vessel on your port side, three hundred meters, closing fast. Jamal, take out the con tower. Verdan, I'm sending the codes now.” There was a brief pause. “Doctor? The remaining prisoners are in the east section. There's nowhere to land, but there's an external fence running behind their position. If you can destroy a section, then I'm guessing they'll take care of things themselves.”

The Doctor glanced at Journey. 

“On it.” 

In seconds they were buzzing the Hek’Ten guards, pistol fire cracking off their shielded hull. Journey turned  _ Freedom's _ guns on the fence. Electricity arced through the wires, burning red. Nothing fell. Journey swore and banked around. This time she aimed at the pylons. The grey metal supports creaked and fell. 

The Doctor squeezed her shoulder. “Good work.” 

Journey tapped her comms link. “Clara, we’re proceeding to the drop point.”

“Understood. Kiry is on her way. We have three more birds in the air. I'm going to send Jamal back to cover those still stuck on the ground before he heads to the Administration building.”   

They disembarked the anxious passengers at the rendez-vous, into the waiting arms of the resistance. Pel seemed reluctant to leave, frustration simmering at her failure to get more people aboard. 

Journey took pity on her. “Clara, what's the status of the remaining prisoners at the yard?”

“From what I saw on the long range scanners, once the pylon was down, the guards were unable to stop a good number leaving.” 

Pel smiled in relief. “Good. And the ships?” 

“We got eleven out of twelve. Wiane didn't make it off the ground. I lost contact with him.” 

Pel nodded grimly.

“Journey, Jamal is clear to start his diversion run on the Administration complex. What's your status?”

“We've disembarked the last passengers.” Journey turned to the Doctor. “Are you good to go?” 

He nodded. 

“All right, then. Let's do this.”

Journey brought the ship in low over the mining complex. After the breakout, the Hek’Ten must have gotten a bit more serious about security, as they had positioned a small fighter, with gun turrets, at the loading bay. 

The Doctor energised his equipment. 

“Doors open on my mark,” Journey called. “I can't promise this will be a smooth ride”

“Just get me close enough to establish the resonance beam,” he said into the comms.

“Doors in five, four, three, two, one. Doctor. It's your show now.” 

Pel was clipped onto a static line, just like the Doctor. He opened the doors.

His equipment beeped and rattled as the beam swept down towards the surface.

“Is it working?” Pel shouted over the roar of air. 

“Too soon to tell.”

“Hold on,” Journey said. “We've got company.”  

#

Clara stood before an array of monitors, switching her attention between them at a startling rate. She turned to face the monitor tracking the Doctor’s ship. A small dot was bearing down on the vessel. 

“Kiry, raider closing in on the  _ Freedom _ bearing north six point five three, mark two.”

“Got it. Target locked.” 

Clara gripped the console. The dot closing in on the  _ Freedom _ winked from the screen. A rush of relief hit Clara, but she hardly had time to register that before there were more messages clamouring for her attention. 

“Well done, Kiry,” she muttered, before she took the next call.  

#

“How much longer?” Journey screamed into the comms.

It was almost impossible to hold the ship steady as the buffeting continued. 

“Thirty seconds! Keep us in range.” 

Journey circled the ship again. Laser fire from the ground arced upwards, probably the same cannons that had fired on them yesterday to them, three months ago to her. She banked sharply left, praying the sudden move wouldn't pitch the Doctor and his equipment right out of the open door.

“Are you okay down there?” 

Silence. Heart thundering, she tried again. Still nothing.

She turned in her seat. “Doctor!” she roared through the ship.

Then his voice cracked through the comms system. “I'm done. Get us out of here.”

  
  



	18. Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor and Clara must defeat the plans of the Crown Prince Venlofax if they want their happily ever after.

It took a month for the Doctor to equip each of the stolen ships with the devices for neutralising the borocetrazine on a planetary scale. The Helian’s worked tirelessly, and when it was done Verdan planned a massive, coordinated attack. He couldn’t blame them. Years of oppression and now they had a taste of freedom. 

Verdan paced in front of her assembled freedom fighters. “We've had successes over the last few weeks we could have only dreamed of in the past decades. Arms shipments destroyed. Kava production disrupted. I’ve never seen Helians so empowered or the Hek'Ten so enraged. We strike now and we strike hard. Borocetrazine mining first. Then we turn on their damn kava fields.” 

The small band of rebels rumbled their agreement. 

The Doctor turned to Clara. “I was thinking maybe we should go. Leave them to their war? We've done enough.” In effect, they had spent months on Helias. He’d treasured the time to watch the bump Clara carried swell and grow, but it was time to go somewhere safer before the real fighting broke out. 

Clara looked up at him, squinting suspiciously. “I thought you might be getting to that. Where do you want to go?”

“Oh, I've found a little place you might like. Deleba. It's quite an exciting planet. Lots interesting little market places and monuments to investigate…” he lowered his voice and said quickly, “Also a very skilled but discreet obstetrician.” 

“Oh?”

“Well, we need to talk about it.” She had avoided all talk of the birth so far, which puzzled him a little. She usually liked to have things planned and under control, but this seemed to be bit of a blind spot for her.

“I know, but there's plenty of time. Isn't there?”

“Oh, I know about time. You can't trust it.” 

He turned to Journey. “So, ready to be off?”

Journey glanced at Kiry. The two women had become firm friends, spending more and more time together. More than friends, he suspected.    

“Thank you, Doctor. But I think I’ll stay.”

The Doctor sighed, and nodded. “I understand.” 

Clara drew Journey into a hug. “Are you sure? You just escaped a war. Do you really want to get stuck in another?”

“Some things, some  _ people _ are worth fighting for. Now you two take care of each other. Promise?”

“Promise.”

The Doctor looked on uncomfortably. He was happy for them. But it was another goodbye to add to the long list, and those didn’t get any easier. Clara took his hand and they slipped into the TARDIS.

 

 

**Deep space, the Imperial Flagship** **_Hydrophane_ **

 

The Crown Prince Venlofax had been planning for weeks, biding his time until the Time Lord moved again. As he sat on the royal ship, his chronometric detection device finally activated, all bright colours and unnecessary flashing lights. There had been nothing over the last month, but now it lit up like a festival tree. The Time Lord was on the move again and this time Venlofax had a plan to snatch the hybrid and save his own family from the terrible wasting disease.

#

On the TARDIS, Clara raised an eyebrow. “What's this?”

“Oh, just a communication device,” the Doctor said casually, fastening a pendant around her neck. 

“Oh? Looks kinda like a panic button. Is that really necessary? You're hardly letting me out of your sight as it is.” 

“The TARDIS is a big ship,” the Doctor said, waving a hand, “What if you wander off and—”

“Doctor. I’m not twelve.”

He sighed. “All right, all right. Just humour me, will you?”

He lifted the heart-shaped silver pendant up and flipped it over. “See there? Tiny little biometric device. Touch both sides with your thumb and forefinger for more than three seconds and I’ll get a signal, no matter where I am in space or time.”

Clara admired the necklace. It would be no hardship to wear it. “It is beautiful.” 

The Doctor reached down and kissed her, pulling her into an awkward, over-the-bump hug. “So are you.”

#

They arrived on Deleba the next day. They investigated the market, and Clara found some spiced tea to die for, so she bought about a year’s worth of the stuff. 

“You’ll never drink all that.”

“Hey, we might never come here again.”

“I thought maybe we’d stay for a while.”

Clara picked up a vivid purple starfruit. “How much for this?” she asked the vendor.

“Ah, this will make your dreams as beautiful as you are,” said the woman. “For you, three pasrat each. Six for a groate.”

Clara smiled and paid, and the vendor passed the fruit in a shimmering silver bag.

The place was bustling with races from all over the galaxy; red-skinned Delebian children weaving and dodging through the crowds, hiding behind crates and boxes piled high with exoctic fruit and vegetables. The sun shone through a slatted roof above this part of the market, casting dancing shadows on the cobbled streets. They walked on, past two Catkind, who bowed their heads as they passed.  

The place was certainly peaceful enough, with the crowds seemingly in no hurry, and the vendors smiling. It would be no bad thing to slow down at this point in the pregnancy. 

“All right. If I was at home I'd be going on maternity leave about now, so I guess we could stay for awhile.” She turned around to face him. “You won't get bored, though?”

“Bored? Me? Of course not,” he scoffed.

The TARDIS was parked at the edge of the small town, and as they walked slowly there Clara felt the first twinge. 

“Oh,” she said, stopping to rub her belly.

“What is it?”

“Nothing. Just an over enthusiastic kick, I think.”  

Twenty minutes later it happened again. “Ow.”

Two men appeared from behind the TARDIS. The first man pointed a handheld weapon at her, the second pointing his gun at the Doctor.

“So much for this planet being safe,” she mumbled.

The Doctor pulled her behind him. “Venlofax,” he said darkly. 

Clara recognised the Prince once the Doctor had said his name. He wore an arrogant sneer. 

“Step away from the human,” Venlofax demanded.

“You’re bananas if you think I'm going to let you take her.”

“I don't know how you're going to stop me,” Venlofax pointed out, with an infuriating smug smile. “I'm the one with the gun, after all.” He moved closer. “Play nice, and I'll send her back to you when I'm done with this messy business.”

Venlofax's man grabbed Clara by the arms, and the prince stepped closer to the Doctor, smirking. “I think I hold all the cards now.”

“You think you can take the woman I love and my unborn child?” the Doctor raged. 

“Fighting words, Doctor,” said the prince. 

He raised his weapon to strike the Doctor’s head with his pistol. The Doctor dodged and grabbed Clara’s hand. The second man lunged at Clara, but she managed a hefty kick to his shin.

“Run!” the Doctor exclaimed. 

“Seriously? I hoped we’d done with running!”

People scattered as they ran. It was like running with a sack of potatoes strapped to her belly. The Doctor’s promise of  _ quiet  _ suddenly took on greater appeal than ever. Clara was panting hard by the time the TARDIS came in sight.

“Nearly there.” The Doctor put his arm around her shoulder to help her the final few steps. 

Two more hefty men stepped out from behind the blue box. They wore the red plumes and cloaks of Venlofax’s personal guard.

This time, the tallest man pressed his weapon to Clara’s temple. She froze.

Another man grabbed the Doctor’s arms. “Let her go,” he said darkly, straining against the guards grip.   

The other guard ignored him. “Move,” he said to Clara, pushing her away from the TARDIS and the Doctor.

“Know this,” the Doctor said. “There is literally nowhere I won't find you and nothing I won't do to get her back.”

The guard holding the Doctor sneered, and then he struck him across the head with his pistol.

Clara screamed and kicked out, but to no avail. The Doctor had crumpled to the floor. She felt something damp across her nose and mouth and then the world became dark.

#

The Doctor struggled to his feet. Venlofax was gone, but he cursed his name all the same as he stumbled into the TARDIS. Blood trickled from his hair. 

He addressed Venlofax and the universe at large. “Hang on, Clara, I'm coming to find you. And Venlofax, if you have any sense of self-preservation at all, they had both better be safe and unharmed when I do.” 

#

Clara woke in a laboratory, surrounded by devices she didn't understand and frankly, that terrified her. She took a breath. She had to stay calm and figure out how to deal with this.

“Ah, you're awake.” Venlofax leaned against a bench, looking every bit the arrogant royal weasel.

When she tried to get up a forcefield simmered above her. “Why have you brought me here?” 

“Well, you and your friend took the child that was going to be the solution to my family problems. Cure the disease that’s killing my father and do the same to me. I think it's only fair that we take your child in its place.”

Clara’s blood ran cold. She put her hand protectively over her belly.  

“You can't possibly think—”

“Oh, I absolutely think I can do what I want. And you and your infant have made it easier for me than I thought.”

Clara felt another twinge. She looked down at her belly in horror. “It's too soon!”

“My medic Korvin here assures me the baby can survive. It seems hybrids are resilient.”

The medic looked on. She was a woman in her forties, with her hair pulled into a long ponytail.

Korvin picked up a slender silver device, and flicked a switch on its side. The end glowed red hot. A laser scalpel. 

Clara struggled desperately in the restraining field. Unless she could get them to turn it off, she was helpless. “For pity’s sake. Have some mercy. At least give me something for the pain before you cut me open.  _ Please _ .”

“All right,” Venlofax sighed. “I’m not a complete animal. Korvin, lower the forcefield and administer some pain relief or whatever you medical types do.”

Clara watched Korvin grab a bulbous device, and hold it in front of her. “Fifty cc’s of halothamine. You won’t feel a thing.” She deactivated the force restraints. 

One second was all Clara needed. Her heart raced. 

The world slowed. Korvin moved towards her, her limbs trailing in the air like a spoon through treacle. Her words spread out. The universe turned on a pinhead, each second shattering into fragments Clara could see and touch. She took a breath, stood up, and raced past Korvin, past Venlofax, and towards the door.

Venlofax tried to grab her, but she flicked his arm away. Amber light trailed around the lab.

She burst through the unlocked doors but then her heart sank. Metal corridors. A porthole. Stars outside. She was on a spaceship. 

“Nowhere to go,” came Venlofax’s mocking voice.

Clara ran blindly. Where to go? The cockpit? The engine room? Maybe there she'd stand a chance of disrupting the vessel. She paused at a door marked “Keep out”. A good a place to start as any. 

The necklace. She clasped it just like the Doctor had told her and said a silent prayer. Then she pushed the door open. 

In the centre of the room was a tall cylinder, with blue gas swirling inside. Probably some kind of power source. Well, anything she could do to cause Venlofax a headache suited her just fine. She looked at the buttons on the control panel and started hitting the buttons randomly. The engine began to whine.

The Doctor would come in time. He always did. Almost always. 

The heat in the room began to rise. Alarms flashed and blared. Clara aimed a desperate glance at the door, and flung the lock across. That should slow them down at least. “Hurry up, Doctor!”

Another wave of pain hit her. The heat was making her burn up, and smoke filled the air and stung her eyes. She sank to her knees.  _ He’ll come. He has to. _

“Where are you, Doctor?” she moaned, as pain rolled through her. 

There was an angry banging on the door, followed by a blast. Venlofax was trying to shoot his way in. Terror flooded her body. She looked desperately for a way to escape the cataclysmic events she'd started, but the engine chamber was pulsing and throbbing, red lights flashing danger everywhere. 

Clara sank to her knees. The door glowed red hot, smoke and steam filling the engine room with startling speed. Venlofax would be through any second now.

Then she looked up. That sound, the most beautiful sound in the universe: the wheezing and grinding that brought hope to the darkness. Clara wanted to laugh and cry, but only managed a groan as more pain ripped through her. 

Painfully slowly, the TARDIS, the bluest blue box, materialised in front of her. 

A woman stepped out of the TARDIS. Her hair was short and blonde, and she wore a long grey coat. She sank to her knees beside Clara.

“Oh, my Clara. Look at the state of you.”

Clara stared past her. “Where is he? Where’s the Doctor?” 

The woman glanced back at the TARDIS. “Oh. Yeah, right. I picked up your signal…”

Clara gritted her teeth. “Where is he?” She gripped the woman’s hand as another wave of pain hit her. “I’m not joking. Tell me where he is or god help me—”

The woman bent low, and spoke softly into her ear. “It’s me, Clara.”

Clara’s heart dropped. 

“No! You can’t have changed, not now. You promised you’d do that with the next one!” It was too cruel to think she’d never see her Doctor again. Her throat was tight with the unbearable loss. She squinted at this new Doctor. “I mean I’m sure you’re great. In fact, I’m sure you’re bloody brilliant, but he can't be gone.”

The Doctor gripped her shoulder. “It's all right. He's not gone. You know how he is. Says he’s on his way and gets here six months later. I got your signal and didn’t want to leave anything to chance. Let's get you out of here.”

Clara let the Doctor help her inside the TARDIS. 

#

The Doctor, inside his own TARDIS, materialised at the coordinates of the homing signal. The remains of a ship were scattered through space, a swirling patch of space debris that made his hearts sink. 

“No no no,” he muttered, his hearts sickened. He scanned for the signal again. She couldn’t be gone. Not like this, she just couldn’t. His hearts leapt as he found it, in the time vortex. He frowned. How was  _ that _ even possible? Then the signal faded. “I’m not losing you now.” He would track that signal to the end of the universe.  

#

Clara looked open mouthed at the inside of the TARDIS for a few seconds, but a wave of pain overtook her before she could really appreciate the splendour. She groaned. There were no chairs. Of course, no chairs. 

“Can you take me somewhere he’ll find us?”

The Doctor smiled. “Of course. I’ll take you home. He’ll find us there.”

The Doctor was as good as her word.

“Colour me impressed. Your driving skills have improved.” They had landed inside her living room. Clara made her way unsteadily to the sofa. She took a breath. Don’t panic. It could be hours yet before the baby came. How close were the contractions? She hadn’t been timing but she was fairly sure they were more than ten minutes apart and her waters hadn’t broken. Plenty of time. 

The Doctor sat down beside her on the sofa. “It’s really good to see you again,” she said. 

Clara took her hand. “You too. I never imagined I’d get the privilege of meeting you. Thanks for coming.”

“The privilege is all mine. I couldn’t miss this.” The Doctor’s smile was broad and joyful.

Clara took her hand and placed it gently on her belly. “I don’t suppose you’d drop a few hints on what we should call her?”

If it was possible, the Doctor’s smile got broader. “Spoilers.” She squeezed Clara’s thumb with her own where their hands were linked, leaned close and stroked her face tenderly.  

They both looked up as a new sound started. 

The Doctor jumped up. “Uh oh, here comes your old man.”      

The door opened, and the Doctor, Clara’s Doctor, burst out at a furious run. “Clara! It’s all right. I’ve got you now.” He skidded to a halt. “Uh, who are you?”

He turned around and looked back at the TARDIS parked beside his own. Then back at the woman next to Clara.

“Ah,” he said, the shoe dropping. “Well, thanks for the help, but I’ve got it from here.”

“Really? Because from where I’m sitting it looks like our Clara here is about to give birth and you were nowhere to be seen.”

“I’m here now. And we’re fine,” he said. 

“Doctor...” Clara warned. 

He turned to his older self. “Nice to meet you. Thanks very much. Bye.”

Clara got herself to her feet and turned to the woman beside her. “We need all the help we can get. So, if you’re not busy or anything…”

“Not busy. Not at all. This is me, not busy, helping out.” She grinned and took Clara’s arm.

“What about Venlofax,” Clara said. “Is he still chasing us?”

“Ah. I think you did a pretty sound job of blowing him to smithereens. He won’t be bothering us again.”

Clara grimaced. “I didn’t mean to kill him, just annoy him a bit and give us time to escape. Wait, maybe I did. Anyone who wants to steal my baby for science experiments really deserves what he gets…” 

The Doctor stood and stared at her back for a moment. 

Clara called over her shoulder, “Come on you!”

He shook his head, and followed them into the TARDIS. “I think we should go find that obstetrician we talked about…” 

“Nah. I’ve got the two best Doctors in the universe right here.” 

#

Hours later…

“Push, Clara!” 

Clara made a guttural kind of growl, and a tiny baby girl slithered into the Doctor’s hands. 

He looked up at Clara and his future self who was holding her hand, with his eyes full of wonder.  “A girl,” he said. “We have a girl.”

#

Later, as mother and baby slept, the two Doctors stood by the door of the TARDIS.

He smiled at the woman before him as she stepped out of the doors and into Clara’s flat. “So, it turns out all right?”

She smiled back. “Better than you could possibly imagine. And thank you.”

“What for?”

“For not giving up. And for giving me some excellent advice.”

He grinned. “Do I?”

“You will.” She gave him another broad smile before she opened her own ship’s doors.

He nodded. Then he turned back to his TARDIS, and his Clara, and his newborn daughter. He paused at the doors and smiled, “I think my future’s in safe hands.”  

#

Clara woke to the sound of breathing and gurgling. Her Doctor, her beautiful Doctor was by her side, holding their baby in his arms.   

He smiled. “You’re both awake, then.” He handed the baby to Clara. “She has your eyes.”

Clara's tired heart felt fit to burst. She'd never seen anything as amazing as the little life bundled in her arms. The eyes that gazed up at her were deep brown, full of intelligence and curiosity. The baby made a soft mewling sound that made Clara just about melt. 

Clara stroked her baby's cheek, and glanced up. “Has the Doctor gone?”

He nodded. “Off in her box. Her own friends are waiting for her.”

“What about us, then?”

“Same life, Clara. But different now we have a family. Oh, the things we'll do together! I'll show you both the crystal Caves of Kastellel Three, where the singing stones fill the chambers with music so sweet it will make you cry. We’ll take a trip down the Nile and watch pharaoh Khufu put the capstone on the Great Pyramid of Giza.” He placed a hand atop the baby’s head, and said softly, “I'll teach her temporal mechanics and how to build a replica of the Stolean Generational Arkships from Lego. We have so much ahead of us, Clara.”   

Clara felt a warm glow in her heart as he took her hand. The places they would see. The universe was literally their playground and they had a lifetime ahead of them to explore.  

She smiled. “Together, then.”

He kissed her gently, and then kissed their daughter’s forehead too. “Together. For the rest of this life. Nothing will separate us again.” 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so grateful to my trusty beta readers @turn-of-the-sonic-screw and @tounknowndestinations for the tireless beat reading and support over the last few years of Whouffaldi stories.   
> And of course, I'm always inspired and delighted by my readers comments.   
> <3 <3 <3 to you all!

**Author's Note:**

> Perhaps this is the start of something more. It might be a bit of light relief between the hard slog of chapters of a more challenging project. Updates might be a bit irregular but please do feel free to egg me on. :)


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